


The Upsidedown Sky

by Amazonia_8



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe- monsters are known, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Castiel (Supernatural), BAMF Dean Winchester, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge 2017, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, FBI/Men of Letters AU, Federal Agent Dean Winchester, Federal Agent Sam Winchester, Hunters are Agents, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Internalized Homophobia, Kidnapped Castiel, M/M, Magic, Pining Dean Winchester, Protective Dean Winchester, Versatile Castiel, Versatile Dean, Violence, Wing Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-01-30 10:59:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12652242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amazonia_8/pseuds/Amazonia_8
Summary: Despite having every resource the government could throw at them, within the vast wealth of lore protected and researched by the Federal Bureau of Letters and Arcanae, there were only five obscurely written entries on angels. And the number of actual angels ever encountered by humans? One, and that guy was a dick. So when intel indicates a genuine, living angel has been captured, with dire consequences to the universal balance, the FBLA send their best agents undercover to a clandestine freak show, where black market monsters are brought in for the enjoyment of those with the means to afford it. The mission is one they've done a thousand times: extract the entity and bring it in.And Agent Dean Winchester's seen it all, but he's never seen anything like Castiel.





	The Upsidedown Sky

**Author's Note:**

> First off, I want to thank my lovely artist [Dogsled](https://thedogsled.tumblr.com/) who did such an amazing job and deserves all the love and kudos for the incredible amount of work put into, not just this fic, but multiple DCBB fics this year as both an author and artist. I am so lucky to have gotten the chance to pair with someone with so much enthusiasm and skill, thank you love!
> 
> This work started as something totally different, 20,000 words of a CIA AU that was not happening. I was going to drop out of the challenge, but remembered a half-finished fic that I began at the same time as my very first fic ever. That thing was also total trash, but there was something there that wouldn't let me hit delete. It was just waiting for its destiny to be a part of DCBB 2017! And so I mashed one trashy fic with the other, cut out bad parts, added some pining, angst and smut, and said, "I think we got a meal folks!" 
> 
> The moral being, don't be afraid to delete everything, but also don't delete anything ever.

 

 

When he screamed, and it took him three full days after regaining consciousness to finally scream, it wasn’t from the pain.

Or the cold. Or the fear.

It was the sound.

Somewhere in this ugly ruin of a building, a steady, merciless seep of water dripped from high above onto the concrete floor, the unchanging note echoing off the broken walls and right into his head.

He couldn’t even lift his arms to block it, couldn’t do anything but await the end of each and every fraction of silence with the terrible, unceasing note.

drip…………………………………………drip…………………………………………drip…………………………………………

It never stopped, mocking him long after his voice had faded in the air. After a time he began to  welcome the distraction of his battered body.

The musculature of his back and thighs burned, throbbed from remaining in a tightly balled crouch for so long. Externally, his skin was littered with evidence of his capture: some fairly rough scrapes, other cuts neat and deep. He focused on one injury, then another, shifting a bit as his position allowed in order to feel their difference along his newly awakened nerves.

On the inside, there was a grinding followed by a piercing sensation that told him one of his left ribs was broken and drilling ever deeper into the surrounding soft tissue. He had never felt prolonged pain before, the cruel novelty of it keeping him sane, at least, against the isolation and that terrorizing noise.

True, there was injury during training, a great deal of it that had never much bothered him before. But this snare had clearly been tailored for him, wound with a revolting charm that prevented him from healing in an instant, and he was surprised to find just how much of his will to fight was drained off because of it. Someone should have _prepared_ him, should have let him practice with such a thing as extended suffering so that he knew what to do with it.

An experimental shift, and the net around him constricted, the magic burning lines into his feathers and flesh. He cried out piteously, like a human might, surprised by his own reaction. In the abstract, he’d understood why they did such things, but he was accustomed to ethereal silence. Wordless vocalizations always made them appear more like animals. How interesting that his body’s reflexes would imitate a human’s after only three days trapped like this. It was something to occupy his mind at least: the education of his torment and the burgeoning compassion for those creatures that might feel what he did now. He tried to focus on that next.

It was another sunset and another sunrise before he heard the footsteps. A thrill of hope shot through him; he couldn’t see the person from his position on the ground, just the mirror polish of a man’s shoes that reflected back a twisted image of just how haggard he’d become. He craned up to look but stopped when the net constricted still tighter in response. The human crouched down and smiled, but it wasn’t right. Something radiated out from the man like the seeking tendrils of a poisonous thing blindly reaching for its prey.

“My but I’ve got a pretty one haven’t I? I must say I’m almost disappointed it’s done, I haven’t had to work this hard in ages and the challenge has been so very refreshing.”

The man smelled of incense and bile, his teeth were very white and he flashed them all at his prize as he reached in a yanked a feather from the shivering left wing, twirling it in the light then running it over his lips.

“We’re going to be good friends little bird. First you’ll make me money, then you’ll make me more powerful than anything this world has seen. And who knows, we might even get to have a bit of fun in between.” 

~:~

“It’s a Class 10 event.”

The both of them whistled, one leaning back, the other leaning in.

“I didn’t know the scale went that high.”

“It goes to twelve.” Agent Harvelle clipped, as if they needed a reminder. It had become an ingrained habit among the department to assume the boys already knew most of what they shouldn’t.

“What’s twelve, global apocalypse?” Dean snorted.

“Yes.”

“Well shit.”

“We don’t care how he did it, we don’t want him neutralized. Your only job is to go in, secure the entity and bring it to the Vault.”

“So you can study it.” Sam prompted, clearly skeptical.

“That’s not your concern.”

“Since when has the Bureau left well enough alone?” Dean challenged, amused. “Some desk jockey up there probably wants to recruit it.”

“Boys, our window is closing and when it does no one- not you, not me, not the boss man upstairs- knows how bad it’s going to get. He cannot be allowed to complete the ritual, it would be the end of everything. And I mean everything.”

Dean’s eyes lit up. Sam was already groaning.

“Say it.” He’d been waiting his whole career for this moment.

“This isn’t a game.”

“He will literally sit here all day, Ma’am.” Sam offered. “I won’t tell.”

“Say it,” Dean’s smile unfurled in a widening line.

Ellen rubbed the side of her face then set them with her most unimpressed look.

“Boys, I need you to save the world.”

~:~

No matter what the movies told you, working for the Federal Bureau of Letters and Arcanae contained neither the glamour of, say, highly skilled agents trading blows on the rooftop of a casino with the bombshell Siren that failed to seduce you, nor the surrounding gleam of razor’s edge tech and a fleet of Gulfstream jets ready to whisk you to Morocco just to put down a Djinn. Any time a rookie made the mistake of mentioning Tom Cruise in _Lettered Men_ as the inspiration for wanting to join the FBLA, they put him on six months straight of logging salt and burn reports just to watch him crack. 

It was a government agency, which meant budget cuts, and mountains of paperwork if you so much as made eye contact with a non-neutral Vamp. It meant most of the people that worked in the D.C. home office had no fucking clue what their next round of rules and best practices meant for the agents in the field.

If you didn’t include that hive of stuffed shirts, who shuffled from one meeting to the next and made their collective proposals about ‘appropriate actions recommended’ to their field operatives with the speed and efficiency of a gang of anesthetized cats, here were two types of agents.

The ones in suits, with the dark glasses holding up official badges and a current copy of the _Abridged Lore Reference Guide,_ were what most people thought of when they pictured the FBLA. And they were what Operations meant when they called for _agents_. Skips.

That’s what everyone else called them. Hopping from plane to plane: home office - field- home office- field. They might show up at your door in twos and fours, but they all worked alone, convening with their temporary partners only hours before they knocked on the door of the next distraught family. And every single one of them was an anti-social douchebag riding a near sexual obsession with airline miles.

But if the body count was high, if the patterns didn’t fit or the beast was old and fearsome and the solution messy- if there were _demons-_ then Operations would request a Team. Teams didn’t fly coach, they didn’t expense their dry cleaning and haircuts. They didn’t bother with paperwork because they didn’t exist. Not on the books anyways. Some of their methods couldn’t exactly be considered legal in the defensible sense of the word. Teams worked in pairs, they roamed the country highways and rooted out the worst of it. Grinding away at the never-ending tide of blood and bone with well calloused hands and a predilection for drink. Calling them Hunters had started as an insult, Skips believing they were all a bunch of redneck gun nuts with barely enough education to pass the entrance.

Nowadays it was a title of pride. Fuck the shiny badges, Dean and Sam knew that if actual Hell broke loose it would be Hunters putting their lives on the line to fight it while the Skips stood in the corner shitting their pretty navy pants.  

And the Winchester boys were something else. They hadn’t been at this nearly as long as some of the old timers, but already they were legends, which wasn’t much of a surprise considering who their father had been. They hadn’t even applied for the job the

usual way. The day after Sam had turned twenty-one, the two of them hopped into the Impala with an arsenal in the trunk and cleaned out the whole state of Kentucky in less than two weeks.

Cleaned everything.

The Bureau sent agents to figure out why every alarm in in the state had gone dark and what they’d found was Sam and Dean kicking back in the scorched remains of a crossroads. They had a dislocated shoulder, two broken ribs, a busted hand, three feet of road rash, a stab wound to the thigh and a cooler of beer between them. They were made FBLA agents before sundown.

“This is gonna be a good one, I can tell.” Dean smiled over the dashboard as the traffic out of D.C. crawled forward another inch. “We’re on some real end of days blood sacrifice Big Bad shit right here. I bet this beats out that time I stopped the Coven of virgins from destroying the city, remember that?” Sam huffed fondly beside him.

“They were hardly strong enough to destroy a city and you stopped them by sleeping with their leader. I’m not sure that’s in the same ballpark as this one.”

“First of all, that was awesome. But what I’m talkin’ about is you and me get to use our skills on something big this time, something different. I swear if I have to gank one more black eyed sonovabitch I will transfer to accounting just to liven things up. We should go shopping, stock up for the battle! I think my guy can get us one of those corner shot grenade launchers, and I know _somebody’s_ had their eye on a fancy new Beretta.” Dean nudged him and waggled both eyebrows.

“You haven’t even read the file.”

“That’s what I got you for.” He gave his brother’s thigh a solid round of pats. Sam shook his head and slid the file out of its manila envelope. They were only two miles closer to the city limits when Sam burst out laughing, turning the paper in his hands so Dean could read the line he was pointing to.

“Looks like I was right, he survived that Milwaukee thing. You owe me twenty bucks.”

Suddenly Dean’s mood wasn’t nearly as light. “Are you kidding me? Please don’t tell me he’s getting involved in this. I’ll have to put a bullet in him, Sam.”

“You know that won’t kill him.”

“Yeah but it’ll feel good.”

~:~

“Wakey wakey boys.”

Dean’s hand was on the gun beneath his pillow before his mind fully registered consciousness. Sam, the giant bastard, now had another tally against him in Dean’s book for sleeping through a disturbance his reflexes should have alerted him to. How that guy was still alive sometimes boggled his mind.

“Damn it Gabriel, can you at least let me get some coffee in me before you start pulling your shit?”

Sam snorted and twitched in the bed across the room.

“No time. Get that beast vertical, you’ve got work.”

They hadn’t seen Gabriel for some time, not that Dean was complaining. Now that the heart squeezing awe of meeting an angel had faded, he’d mostly just found  Gabe to be a pain in the ass.

He remembered what it had been like, years ago, when Gabriel had crashed one of the Bureau’s black sites to retrieve an item he’d lost in an age before humans could write. His superiors had collectively, and professionally, lost their goddamn minds. In the far reaching history of their predecessors, the men who catalogued and kept the secrets of the inhuman things which had once lived beyond common perception, no one had ever _encountered_ a real angel, as far as they could tell. Even the lore, which had exactly five mentions of their existence, framed them in such abstract that most of the living scholars had thought of them as a metaphor for otherworldly energies they couldn’t yet explain. And after they’d determined Gabriel was not an actual threat, they’d tried so damned hard to get him to play ball, offered him anything he wanted just for a chance to learn  about his species and maybe run a few tests. The Bureau’s best men were assigned to the task but after six months all they’d worked out was that the angel enjoyed candy and being an evasive prick. And despite continued efforts, they’d only ever gotten two usable facts out of guy:

-Angels most certainly existed.

-They had exactly zero interest in coming into contact with mankind.

Gabe was an anomaly, he’d admitted as much with pride. Trying to formulate serviceable data on angels based on his behavior was futile, so in the end they were not much better off than when they started. Even the occasional assistance from the capricious little shit tended to cause more trouble than it was worth.

“Sam wake up, your girlfriend’s here.” Fully dressed in sleep rumpled clothes, Dean was already splashing water on his face. When he turned around he found breakfast and coffee steaming on the tiny motel table.

“Not that I mind the perks of putting up with you, but why do I feel like this is an apology for whatever shit storm you’re about to throw us into?” Gabriel shrugged shoulders and eyebrows, but he was being uncharacteristically quiet.

“Oh, hey Gabe.” Sam smiled sleepily over at the angel as he stretched and curled up to sitting. “Dean owes me twenty cause you didn’t die in the Milwaukee thing.”

“Oh, hey Sam.” Dean snarked. “Sorry to wake you, did you get enough sleep?”

Sam only ignored him as he went straight for the coffee. “They didn’t say you’d be working with us.”

“Probably because they wanted us to take the job.” Dean laid out three strips of bacon between two danishes, cramming the amalgam in his mouth, enjoying looks it got him. “Don’t knock it, man.”

When Gabriel still didn’t respond, the brothers finally paused, giving each other the exact same look, turning in sync to evaluate him.

“They don’t know you’re here.” Dean guessed, rightly if the clever slit of Gabe’s eyes was any indication.

“I’m in a real tricky spot, guys.” Gabriel leaned against the wall, hands unsure of what to do. “Right now, I’ve got two options. I could trust you, trust that beneath the self-righteousness and martyrdom kink and flannel, you two might have a shred of real decency. Or I could make things easy and just blackmail you. Fun fact, did you know I have the power to take possession of your body and force you to mutilate one another?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s more of a threat than blackmail.” Dean laughed. He would eat a bullet before he let Gabriel see how much his words had rattled him. It clearly didn’t take the fucker long to work out his own weakness where Sam was concerned.

“Ok, we can work with threat if you like.”

“Whoa, Gabe, Dean, let’s-- Gabe we’re here to help. You know that, right? All we want to do is help get your angel pal outta there so this warlock can’t use him to blow up the world, or whatever it is he’s trying to do. We’re on your side. And if we’re all working together, this job shouldn’t be a problem.”

Sometimes it was easy to forget that Sam’s sincerity wasn’t an act. After so many years on the road, placating folks that had got their first real encounter with the mean little things that go bump in the night, Sam’s soft voice and compassionate eyes had lost all impact on Dean. But apparently, angels weren’t entirely immune. Gabriel deflated some, kicked off the wall, sank down on the other bed.

“I can’t work with you. I can’t get involved.”

“Why not?”

“You can’t be scared of one little warlock.” Dean scoffed.

“I’m not scared,” Garbiel snapped, then chewed on words not yet spoken, clearly weighing the cost of whatever it was he was about to tell the brothers. “We can be…..there are wards. Against angels. The right ones can keep us out and there are some that can….bind us. Contain our grace, prevent us from flying.”

That was new. Had there ever been a mention of binding angels in the lore? Barring them from entering someplace? Judging by the barely contained fascination radiating from Sam, Dean didn’t think so.

“That’s how they’re keeping your friend?” Sam asked.

“My brother.” So softly, eyes to the floor. “We don’t have ‘friends’. Every angel is a brother, sister. We’re connected in a way you cannot understand.”

“Even more reason for us to help you.”

“You know what,” Gabriel flashed a curious little smile at Sam. “I can’t actually recall having to ask for help before. It’s kinda itchy...”

“Yeah, well it never gets fun.” Dean groused. When the silence dragged a little too long, he glanced over at Gabe, who was giving him a shrewd look that made his instincts jangle a warning.

“Not all angels are the same.” Gabe didn’t break his gaze. “Some, like yours truly, are well beyond average in the great, cosmic power department. I could break those wards easy, how do you think I knew they’d put you two on the case?”

 “You broke into the Bureau.” Sam realized, “You’ve read the files.”

“You can do that?” Now Dean was impressed.

The FBLA had all of D.C. protected by a seventy mile rune spiral that took twenty-one full time Occult Specialists just to keep the thing active ‘round the clock.

Their headquarters had so many protection spells cast around it, Dean’s skin would crawl every time they walked through the front door. Some of the newer agents, ones that didn’t have a lot of experience with magic, had allergic reactions until their bodies got used to it. The runny nose, puffy eyes rimmed in purple, sneezing, they called it First Day Face. Seeing as a Red Level lockdown hadn’t been called, Gabriel had somehow slipped past all that undetected. It was starting to sink in how desperate Gabe must be if he’d willingly give up the existence of wards and his advantage over their defenses.

“I can do a lot of things big boy,” Gabe winked at Sam. “But one thing I can’t do is keep my nice, quiet, _anonymous_ existence if I try to intervene. I set foot over those wards and a whole lotta alarms are going to ring with my name on them, and I can’t have that happen. Listen, if they’d taken anyone else, any other angel, I would have said good riddance and found the nearest bottle of champagne. But Castiel is……he’s not like them. He deserves a fair shot. I can get you into where they’re holding him, but the rest is up to you.”

“Thanks? But we’ve been doing this a while now, I think we can handle a bag n’ tag.” Dean said.

“True, but if you two try to kick down doors with both guns drawn you’ll be dead before you hit the ground. Your Bureau only knows the address, they don’t know what’s inside.”

“And I’m assuming you do?”

Some of the old mischief curled into Gabriel’s smile. “You boys like parties?”

~:~

Sam came out of the bathroom and Dean whistled. His baby brother looked sharp, charcoal suit and a pink tie that Dean had teased him about at first, but he must admit looked great. Dean was in a paler grey wool with a peacock silk tie and shoes shinier

than his baby.

“Gotta look the part boys.” Gabe had said when he handed them the suits, and boy did they. Two handsome as fuck high roller douchebags out for a night of invite only debauchery. They hadn’t run an old-school charm con like this in a while. Not since before they’d become agents and their father had left them to mostly fend for themselves. Being a hunter wasn’t nearly as creative, lately it had all been reduced to blood under the fingernails, headshots and gasoline and which brand of liquor made the best antiseptic 

Dean grinned at his brother as they hopped in the car. He had to admit, he was genuinely excited about facing something so completely unknown. Sam was the planner, he liked to know exactly what weapon could kill which thing and how, and if the way he kept fussing with his hair was any indication, he wasn’t feeling nearly as comfortable with this job as Dean was.

The road to the manor spooled out narrowly between an ocean of dark trees. There was nothing here, a few scattered homes set so far back their mailboxes were the only indication they existed. The sole reason Dean hadn’t called Operations to see if they’d gotten the right coordinates was Gabriel sitting perched in the back seat, tersely giving directions and slapping at Sam’s hand when he tried to adjust his tie. Another mile and he pointed to the driveway. Unnecessarily though, since the two pale stone griffins guarding the wrought iron gate were indication enough by the way they turned and blinked down at the car with their cold white eyes. With a snap of Gabriel's fingers, the gates opened silently on oiled hinges. Dean turned up the drive and followed the trail of lights to the great behemoth of a house ahead of them, glowing like a ship on the black sea.

“Everything is magic’d,” Gabriel warned them as they slowly rolled up the drive. “But the only thing you need to do to get in is give them this.” He produced two heavy cream invitations that gave off a whiff of pine resin and burnt sage. The ink shimmered, the scrollwork curling into new shapes at the edge of Dean’s vision while a faint tinkling music teased at him. Definitely magic, and pretty clean stuff, too for something so small. “Don’t react to anything, you got that? Nobody knows anybody here, and they won't be using names, so it’s not like you’ll cause suspicion as long as you act like just another bored asshole.”

“Dean’s got that covered,” Sam grinned.

“Take these.” He shoved two black credit cards at them, shiny as glass. “This is the only weapon you can take in there. Guns, knives, blessed objects, they’ll disintegrate when you cross the threshold and get you tossed out. But anything you manage to find inside to use is fair game.” He handed them each a wad of cash and tossed a small leather pouch into Sam’s lap.  “Put that in the glove compartment. It’ll shield you from detection if you manage to make it out of there alive.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Gabriel ignored him. “You remember what I said? About praying?”

_Dear Gabriel, eat me._

“Do not fucking use my name.” Gabriel growled and cuffed Dean on the back of the head. “Just do what you do and get him out of there.”

And then he was gone.

~:~

Though the front doors lay open, they were obscured by a heavily draped red curtain. A matching red carpet lead the way, framed by huge white feathers, nine feet tall. They bent gracefully into an arch, climbing up the steps to a trim line of waiting staff. Orbs of soft light floated everywhere, pulsing like drowsy lightening bugs, the air around them going warm and still, perfectly comfortable despite it being a crisp September evening. Once again, Dean was impressed by the subtlety of it, the care put into what amounted to set dressing. He tracked one of the orbs as it passed by him, looking for a flicker, a flaw in the spell, and finding none. Waiting at the top step was a dangerously beautiful woman in a dress that amounted to no more than string and strategically clustered beads who took their invites without giving pause. She smiled and nodded them on another few feet where a tuxedoed man servant tastefully frisked them both. Dean pursed his lips at this bit of theatre and stole a glance at his brother. Sam already wore an expression of perfectly detached boredom. It was amusing that the guy who lived in dirty jeans and scuffed boots, who washed himself in a gas station bathroom at least once a week, could transform into such a prissy bitch with very little effort.

The interior was exactly as opulent and overdone as he’d expected, the guests delighting in the mingled stench of their obscene wealth, tittering high and light down the hallway and into the politely crowded salon. Dean slid up to the bar and ordered the oldest scotch they had, neat. Over the rim of his glass he surveyed the windows, the doors, moving through the crowd on one side as Sam took to the other.

They’d hoped there was a way to sneak off and jailbreak the angel before anyone noticed, but this house was huge and the help was doing a bang up job making sure no one wandered off where they shouldn’t. By the time the whole assembly was being escorted into the ballroom, Dean had already started murmuring to Sam to get ready for Plan B. Whatever that was going to be.

The brothers knew, on paper, what they were about to see. Though he hadn’t been able to get inside, Gabriel had been secretly watching the cargo brought in for the last two days, which only confirmed what little was in the file. But neither of them was completely prepared for the actual sight, or the bone sick feeling of disgust at the cooing appreciation of the crowd.

The ballroom was adorned like the inside of a circus tent, stripped silks gathered high overhead with Fresnel lights tucked in beside the chandeliers. Thirteen large boxes, like small, brightly colored shipping containers draped in purple silk, lined both walls, six at each side and one at the far end next to a softly playing calliope. Down the center of the room, a banquet spread decorated with miniature fountains spraying plumes of popcorn, paper cones that spun cotton candy from thin air, statues made of rainbow lollipops that reshaped themselves like animate Lego blocks every handful of seconds. And everywhere a small army of smartly dressed handlers scurried about like dapper rodents.

An unseen band burst to life, a spotlight turning on a short, impeccably dressed man tossing a silver toped cane from hand to hand. He didn’t introduce himself, he didn’t have to. The people around them all knew Fergus Crowley quite well, as one might expect considering his rumored wealth outstripped them all. The Winchesters knew him from the unreadably thick dossier that seemed to get longer by the hour. Crowley had a hand in everything and his fingerprints on nothing. He stayed outside the reach of the FBLA, but only just. Crowley never hid what he was, flaunted it even, as evidenced by that evening’s event. Cleverly enough, it was his saving grace. He was too powerful and too public a figure to take out without serious repercussions, but after a minute of listening to the guy talk, Dean began to fantasize about unloading an entire clip into his smug, round face, to hell with the paperwork.

The guests were invited to follow his lead, and with a flourish of his hand, the spotlight would turn on one of the boxes, the curtain drawing up to reveal a scene in miniature of one of the monsters the hunters spent their nights killing, pinned like a butterfly, snarling and snapping amidst the set dressing and applause. A werewolf in classically ripped pants baying in a bramble of fake midnight trees under a fiber optic full moon. A siren sitting chained to a rock, half nude and dripping in pearls as mechanical waves undulated beside her. At least they hadn’t tried to shove her in a fake tail. Or maybe they had, she didn’t look quite as hungry as the others. Crowley strutted and pranced, gleefully announcing the dark, mysterious origins of each like they’d all been scooped out of the pages of a children’s book. Dean tried not to snicker at ‘ _lonely moors of wind and stone’_. He knew the reality was more like a back alley in Des Moines with an unmarked van and some elephant tranqs.

He’d heard of people doing something like this, capturing creatures and posting videos online, keeping them in a cage to poke with a stick until the thing died of starvation or broke free and had a nice warm meal. The FBLA never tried to suppress any of it. Monsters were never, officially, confirmed, the line of response had always been that the Bureau’s purview was in the research and management of _anomalies_. But that didn’t mean they weren’t public knowledge. Denying they existed had totally backfired in Roswell, besides, there were just too many of them to keep people ignorant. The average Joe would never run into anything bitey in his lifetime, much to his relief, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a public appetite for _Witch Week_ on the Discovery Channel, or non-stop marathons of _Finding Bigfoot_ (Dean knew, for a fact, they were never gonna find that thing).

So these people _knew_ what they were gawping at, at least they thought they did, and Dean couldn’t believe they were still stupid enough to willingly crowd themselves into a room with a dozen of the most pissed off monsters he’d ever seen. Money and polish gave it all a sheen of safety and there was nothing more in the whole world Dean wanted to do at that moment than snap the chains of one of these creatures and sit back with a beer while it tore these morons to ribbons.

But instead, he tittered on cue and shared appreciative words with the other guests over what a _very_ good job their host had done procuring these oddities for their pleasure.

They moved as a group around the room, clustering and weaving until they came to the centerpiece, best for last. The real reason the brothers were here. Crowley drew out the tension as long as he could, devious smile and eyeliner. When the curtain lifted, everyone gasped in shock, including Dean, and not just as part of his cover.

He was beautiful. Wild dark hair, wild blue eyes, and oil slick iridescent black wings that spanned out to the edges of his gilded cage in fear. He wore white linen pants and nothing else, the better to see the authenticity of wing bone and muscle flexing at his back. Fine wrought gold chains glinted as they linked a leather collar to cuffs the brothers could see from here were scrolled with some of the markings Gabriel had told them about. The poor thing looked terrified and furious and the louder the crowd became, the harder he struggled against his bonds. There was something about him that broke Dean’s heart straight in half and the strength of it was stealing his breath away. A beautiful, divine thing, captured and trussed for an evening’s distraction and money on the barrel.

Without realizing it, Dean had shouldered his way to the front of the crowd. The angel was looking at all of them and none of them, there was no way out but his need to search anyway consuming him.

Until his gaze fell on Dean.

The second those blue eyes locked onto his own, everything stopped: time, heartbeat, muscle fiber, thought. He wasn’t himself, he wasn’t standing here, the world diffused around him until he was left without a body- only sight, only the feeling of being held down, captured, saved from flying away into some ether above him. There was a sound, like an alarm bleating outside of a dreamscape, crawling in closer, digging needles into the forefront of his awareness.

_Him him him him him_

“Dean!” Sam was shaking his arm gently. The crowd was being seated for supper and Dean had to break away from his enchantment if he wanted to keep up appearances.

The angel watched him go.

It was an extravagant and rather archaically traditional service. Nearly two hours of artistically plated shapes that were apparently food. Dean didn’t worry too much about not knowing what half the stuff was or how to tackle it, he just took Sammy’s cues because _of course_ the guy knew the proper function of all eight forks.

He needed a plan. Dean never took his eyes off the angel all throughout the meal and ground his teeth audibly; Sam had to kick him under the table to get him to focus. His mind cycled through scenarios, exit routes, Sam plus Dean minus however many lackeys they could put down in less than a minute. It was looking desperate, until the moment it got worse.

“Ladies and gentleman, now for a real treat….”

The cages were being moved, pushed on unlocked wheels through various doors. Fuck, they were taking him, where were they taking him? There was no way for Dean to react without blowing their cover, a hand on his wrist meant Sam knew the same.

“If your evening is nearing its end, cigars and brandy in the salon and thank you for coming. For those of you whose curiosity has yet to be satisfied, for a small fee you can watch them feed. For just a bit more they can feed on you. Supervised, of course.” Bemused laughter pebbled the air. “And for the highest bidder this evening, one hour alone to tarnish the angel’s halo any way you like.”

_Shit shit shit_

He felt like he was going to be sick. The room blossomed in giddy interest, bids immediately coming in. The opportunity was there, but they needed an out. His mind revved with adrenaline and hit upon a Hail Mary plan that had to work. If it didn’t, he going to set this whole place on fire with everyone in it and hope he could get to the angel in time.

Towards the center of the table sat a ghoulish little man with small round glasses that obscured his eyes and a wet mouth of sickly teeth. He was fast coming out the victor, excited, trembling ecstasy shaking his hands each time he upped the bid. He was going to desecrate that beautiful thing no matter the cost.

Dean palmed his steak knife and tucked it into his pocket, whispered his plan to Sam, who nodded grimly then did the same. He felt a pang of momentary nervousness for his brother. If his end didn’t go smoothly, it was all over in a second.

Dean stood gracefully and ambled up to the front of the table, eyes locked on Crowley the whole way.

“Enough foreplay, this little piggy couldn’t keep it up with both hands and a splint.” He patted the little man’s bald pate as he passed. “I think your Pegasus needs a real man to break him in. Let’s make it an even ten million and call it a night.” There was an intrigued murmur from the group. Shit, he hoped he hadn’t been too eager. Crowley eyed him with an unreadable look.

“We have ten million on the table, will there be a counter offer?” But the snarling little man only sputtered as he calculated mentally. Dean saw the moment he’d won on the weasel’s crestfallen face. “Sold!”

They lead him to the side to settle accounts. Dean had always had a steady hand, it was a job requirement if you planned on staying alive. But he’d never had to work on it harder than he did at the moment he was asked to provide payment. What if the card didn’t work? What if whatever magic Gabriel had used to get it was made void in this place? Dean prayed one time to a God he wasn’t sure was up there, pulled the wallet from his jacket and removed the card.

His own concerned expression reflected in the mirror black, Dean schooled his features, trying to look more excited with his purchase than afraid the gamble wouldn’t work. Across the room, his brother negotiated his own deal. The handler scribbled on his tablet and handed back the card with a polite nod. It was done. Dean stole a glance at Sam as they were lead into opposite directions, Sam with a small group, Dean alone.

The handler at his elbow escorted him down a dim hall, droning on about rules. Dean didn’t pay any attention until the man drew an ugly looking knife from his coat, the blade and handle both scrolled with spell work that made Dean feel sea sick each time he tried to read it.

“……as long as you do not, under any circumstances remove the restraints. If he gives you any real trouble this should help put him back in line. But please do remember to be careful with it.” He placed the knife into Dean’s palm. “Injury is acceptable, but killing him will cost you more than you’d care to pay.”

Dean chuckled in character while imagining how good it would feel to snap this man’s neck bones with his bare hands.

They stopped then, the man opening a heavily locked door, bowing Dean inside and closing it softly behind him.

He was alone with the angel.

The chains had been linked to a ring in the far wall, the floor littered with brightly colored silk pillows like it was a goddamned harem. Dean’s heart rate spiked, and for a moment he completely forgot why he was here.

God, he was stunning.

The angel remained completely still, pupils dilated in fear. Dean lowered the blade deliberately to the ground and held up his empty hands. Here goes nothing.

_Castiel_

He prayed.

_I’m not going to hurt you. My name is Dean and I’m here to help you. Your bro- I know your name, see? I know how to pray to you and I’m sure it’s the last thing you’re inclined to do right now, but I need you to trust me._

Dean moved in closer, slowly, gaging the suspicion in those blue eyes. “Castiel.”

He reached out a hand to touch the angel’s shoulder, his heart clenching when the creature jerked in panic, but he left it resting on the bare slope of skin. Didn’t notice the gentle circles his own thumb began to make on that spot. “I’m going to get you out of here, but I need to take off these chains.” He reached into the jacket pocket and pulled out the pilfered steak knife. The angel scowled at him and tensed, bracing for pain.

 _I’ll fix this_ , Dean thought wildly for a moment, _I’ll fix all of this for you, please let me…._

But he didn’t have time to dwell on it, slid his hand down to carefully grip the slim wrist and peel up one edge of the leather cuff away from the skin as Dean held the angel’s eyes.

“Not gonna hurt you, Cas. So please don’t hurt me.”

The leather was thin, the blade sawing through easily enough, and the moment his hands were free, Castiel’s whole bearing changed. His magnificent black wings, previously closed tight at his back, began to flutter in excitement. Dean couldn’t help but smile. “Good, you’re doing good, Cas. Ok, let’s do the other one.”

Now all that was left was the collar. Dean rested a hand on the leather to signal what he intended to do, then carefully tilted the angel’s head to expose the side of his neck. It was a miracle the creature let him, seemed to trust him. Easy does it, just a little more. And then he was free and Dean jumped back waiting to see if his next breath would be his last.

Screams erupted from outside the room, one long wail and then a chorus following. Footsteps, gunshots.

Dean’s attention whipped around to the door. Looked like Sam got the vamp free, now they needed to use the cover and get the hell out of here. But before he had a chance to turn around, Dean was knocked to the ground and pinned there by unearthly strength and brilliant blue eyes. Castiel looked at him, all the inches of his face and body as if taking an inventory, quirking his head to one side then the other. The hunter’s instincts were screaming to _hit, struggle, move_ against the force of something ‘other’ holding him down. But he willed it silent, and when Castiel leaned down, nuzzled his neck and began to sniff at him, dry lips brushing an abstract path, a new set of instincts started to take hold.

_Fucking Christ Dean, pull it together._

“Cas, buddy, we gotta go.” He croaked, managing to get them both standing. He grabbed the spelled blade from the ground, shaking out his arm as the magic shivered up his veins. He gave Castiel the steak knife. “Take this, stab anything that tries to stop us that’s not Sam.”

They were in the hallway, the screams and chaos coming from somewhere up ahead. At his left, a door crashed open and several party goers streamed out in panic. Inside the werewolf snarled and thrashed about in a binding circle of beige powder, his chains broken. He could smell the blood. Dean picked up a vase from the hall table, leaned inside the room and chucked it at the floor, breaking the line of powder before diving back, grabbing Castiel’s hand and pulling him out of the way just as the beast barreled through to pursue the fleeing guests. He didn’t let go as they ran through the ballroom, a panorama of gore and silk and broken crystal. Dean counted five -no six- of the monsters free in the massive fray, kept his distance from them as he wove across the room. The folly of these guests was being made viscerally evident over every square of parquet floor. These creatures weren’t insentient, they weren’t animals. With few exceptions, they walked around as humans, which was why they proved so hard to find. And like humans, they remembered very well which of the terrified crowd had insulted them, had dowsed them in champagne and pricked them with knives to find out the color of their blood.

They knew exactly who had put them in chains.

Fergus Crowley, backed against a far wall, tracked the escape of the hunter with his property while frantically protecting himself from the carnage on all sides. Dean felt the tug of the angel’s hand slowing them. Castiel had seen him, too, and wanted to rush in, claim the kill he deserved, but Dean held tight.

“Not here Cas, he’s too strong here. We have to go!” With a parting glare, the angel followed. They were almost to the other side when the ragged stump of a severed leg nailed Dean right in the gut, knocking him double. When he managed to get standing, Castiel wasn’t beside him anymore. Frantic, Dean tore through the crowd, blood soaked guests clawing for safety and blocking his way. Over the bodies he saw the great black wings flare up and ran in time to watch Castiel crouch and snarl while five of Crowley’s men tried to get the angel under control. Dean took out one of them, pulled the gun from the man’s holster and cracked him across the back of the head. He didn’t get a chance to aim at another. Castiel’s wings flashed in opposite directions, one knocking a man to his knees, the other slicing a second man’s throat open with the sharp edge of a primary feather. Castiel leaped, rolled, stabbed up into one ribcage with the knife Dean had given him, then across, into the soft belly of another assailant. The last man regained his feet, reared up, and Dean reacted instantly, shooting him through the cheek as he tried to grab Castiel from behind. The angel spun around with the remnants of holy fury darkening his features. And Dean, immediately and inexplicably, flushed hot all over.

Together they made it to the front hall where Sam skidded in from another wing, blood spattered and determined. As he ran up to his brother, Castiel lunged at him, and Dean only barely managed to get between them.

“No! Sam- this is Sam! Don’t kill this one!” Castiel stayed poised for a moment, eyeing the larger man before lowering his wings. They were down the front steps seconds later.

The valets were nowhere to be seen. Dean threw the keys to Sam and shoved Castiel into the backseat before sliding in next to him. He did his best to get both wings under control as Sam peeled down the drive. The moment they cut hard onto the open road, Castiel stilled, turning to watch out the rear window as the lights from the manor were swallowed up by the dark.

~:~

Eyes open, eyes closed.

Open, closed.

He tried to measure out a space of darkness in time with his own breathing, but it was too erratic, he was too excited.

He was free.

He had to remind himself he was free. When his eyes were closed, it felt like he was still back in that room, still chained to one thing until the moment Crowley deemed he should be chained to something else. His bed had been soft there, too, like the one he lay on now, but he had feared that softness because it always meant he was about to be forced under, sunk down into the muck of a paralytic sleep by Crowley’s twisted murmurs. Incense in the air, clinging to his feathers, the warlock’s white gleaming teeth the last thing he would see for many hours. Something was always different when he woke. New bonds, new room, new cuts and scrapes, fresh bowls of animal bone and blood, fresh food and water, different face in the corner watching him.

No one ever spoke to him but Crowley, and though he understood the words, their meaning almost always eluded him. The little man would saunter in and trail a few silky sounding phrases as he appraised Castiel, inspected some knickknack in manicured fingers before setting it down and laughing at something he’d said. He was vile, and Castiel knew that whatever purpose Crowley had for capturing him and bringing him here was an evil one. He wasn’t permitted to smite humans, he wasn’t trained as a soldier, but maybe they would be lenient with him if he disobeyed this once.

He spent days feigning compliance before Crowley got close enough for him to try. He held as still as he could as the warlock ran his fingers through Castiel’s sensitive feathers. The man did it every chance he got, but it wasn’t pleasant like it was when his brothers groomed him. When Crowley touched him, he wanted to cringe away, wanted to rub his wings on the curtains to get the stench of the man off him. It was filthy and possessive, but he accepted it that week with stoic calm until the man got in just the right position. Castiel flew at him in a whirl of wings and limbs, legs locked around Crowley’s torso, pinning him to the ground as he pressed a hard palm against the man’s forehead. A spark, then nothing.

And Crowley had laughed and wriggled suggestively under him, praised him for his fire and bite then mocked him for his impotence. The sigiled bonds left him powerless as a human child.

It was odd, but he could still feel them. The tight warm circles of leather around his wrists and neck, he rubbed at the skin as if to reinforce what his eyes could see but his body still refused to accept. The human had cut them off, had set him free.

The beautiful human that glowed like fire at sunset. _Dean_.

He had seen very few humans up close, but he was certain this one was brighter than any other in creation. All those people staring at him in his cage had been ugly, grey. Their voices sounded happy and light but it didn’t match their souls. Decayed things, just as malformed as the other creatures caged with him that night. And coming through their midst, that brightness, burning away the gloom. The green eyes not just looking at him but seeing him. What was a man like this doing here? He’d wondered if he was watching the first blush of corruption on the other man and it had made him so very sad. Such a terrible spike of sorrow that this brightness was here in the dark, ready to be consumed. That was how he knew he could trust him when they were alone, not just the prayer, not the knowledge of his name. The man set about releasing Castiel and he was afraid to do it, but carried on with kind hands. In that moment, Castiel knew he had been right. This man was righteous; his soul was on fire with his intention to protect Castiel and the angel knew without question he would follow him.

_I will watch over you now, you are safe._

He traced the curve of Dean’s brow as he lay beside him on the bed, watched with pleased satisfaction as the creases there eased and the man fell deeper into dreamless sleep.

~:~

There was bird song, and a heavy scent on a heavy breeze that smelled of green and decay and wet earth. Unfamiliar, but Dean was warm and content and safe.

_You’re safe._

Wondered why he’d just thought that. Bed was soft, must have lucked out on the motel choice this time. He stretched languidly, eyes still closed, unwilling to give up the drowsy comfort of sleep just yet. The blanket felt strange but pleasant shifting over his skin. When had he fallen asleep? On the next inhale, his lungs filled with a scent like ozone, sweet as the air before a storm. It was nice. He rolled and something brushed his feet. Sort of like feathers, feathers everywhere. And now a hand on his hip sliding up, thumb running under his collarbone. Had he picked someone up last night? Shit, he was going to have to play the _sweetie honey_ game because he sure as hell didn’t have a name to recall. Or a hangover for that matter, he didn’t usually forget a name without the skull crushing vice of a morning after. Slowly, he opened his eyes to another set, blue as a hot cloudless sky, staring back a few inches away. Dean shot up and overbalanced, nearly going over the side of the bed. The angel pulled him back easily and pushed him flat into the mattress, crawling up to hover over the hunter. Dean wasn’t trying to figure out where he was now, how he got there, what was happening, he was just trying to get a handle on the fact that he was in bed with a half-naked angel on top of him while his body down-shifted into arousal with alarmingly speed. Castiel, perched across Dean’s thighs, sat up on his knees, wings fanning out as he looked down with a kind of eager curiosity at the human beneath him.

“Dean.”

Oh, sweet Jesus, that voice. It took the express route from his spine to his dick and to Dean’s utter embarrassment, he groaned. The sound seemed to please the angel, who made a small purring rumble in his throat and dipped quickly, brushing his lips along Dean’s neck, collarbone, jaw. Dean sucked in a breath and held perfectly still. He could actually feel the circuits shutting down in his brain one by one. Pack it up boys, Southern Regional office has got it from here.

“Awww…he likes you!” Sam stood across the room, leaning against the door frame with arms crossed and a smirk sharp enough to snap Dean back into his right mind. He pushed the angel off and flushed a deep, guilty red.

“Mind telling me what the hell’s going on? Where are – _Cas stop_ —where….Cas seriously man, hands off!” Dean tried to scoot out from under the angel and make it to the edge of the bed, but Castiel kept wrapping his arms around Dean’s body from behind, wriggling in closer and nosing at his neck. He jerked away with a bit more force, but damn was that guy _strong_. Dean tried to stand but was yanked back down on his ass when Castiel got his hands around Dean’s waist again. With a playful shove, a grumbling purr in an octave almost too low to hear, Castiel laid Dean out flat on his back with very little effort. He placed his palm in the center of Dean’s chest and all at once his whole body was flooded with luminous white pleasure. Every muscle, every cell contracted as one and Dean gasped, desperate for air, arching, hands clawing at the sheet as everything housed beneath his skin fused with terrible, gorgeous ecstasy. And just as quickly as it happened, it stopped, leaving Dean hollow, his vision dimming as the feeling drained away from him in a rush.

Sam had the offending hand pinned behind Castiel’s back in a flash of habit as he hauled Castiel off his panting brother. Castiel looked surprised but didn’t resist.

“What did you do?!” He demanded.

“I wish to thank him.” Castiel looked down at Dean in confusion, paying particular attention to the fact that Dean was very clearly in danger of splitting his jeans open with an erection hard enough to drill diamonds. “He likes it.”

Letting Castiel’s arm go, Sam sighed, “He’d like heroin if you gave it to him. Look, I don’t know if angels get the concept of informed consent, but that’s not ok, so next time just say ‘Thank you’, yeah?“

 “Oh my god,” Dean rolled up to sitting, pressing the heel of his hand into the monstrous bulge, groaning. “What the hell _was_ that?”

 “That is how we show our appreciation to one another.” Castiel smiled at Dean. “My good will expressed through my grace.”

Sam’s straight face didn’t last long. “He must appreciate you _so hard_.”

“Funny,” Dean tossed back, standing. He pointed at Castiel while trying to adjust himself. “Do not do that again.”

“I won’t.” Castiel’s eyes went wide, surprised and shamed by Dean’s reaction. Which, goddamnit, made Dean feel guilty. He turned to Sam, eager to change the subject.

“Where are we?” he asked, looking around, as this was absolutely not the roadside motels they frequented. They were in a proper bedroom, sparsely furnished but comfortable. A large window stood open along the far wall looking out over a portion of roof and beyond it a small patch of cleared land that ended in a surrounding wall of green. A humid breeze curling in from outside carried the smell of marsh, wet saturated earth and a blunt sweetness that thickened with the heat. Gardenia maybe, or magnolia, not that Dean would know.

“The Florida safehouse, just below the state line.”

That’s right. Sam had driven the first shift, with Dean in the backseat trying not to stare at Castiel as he watched the stars, his head against the window. Nobody said a word about the bloodbath they’d left behind. They’d reached a town, but it still wasn’t far enough, so Dean took the wheel the rest of the night, driven all the next day with barely a break and the sense that Crowley was chasing at their heels, though they’d seen no sign of such a thing. The motels didn’t seem like a good place to stash an angel, so Sam had pointed them to the nearest safehouse and took over the drive while Dean crashed hard in the front seat. He didn’t even remember making it inside.                                                                                          

“Supplies?”

“Fully stocked, weapons, canned goods, separate water supply. There’s a town about twenty minutes north, I was going to do a run for some additional things and check out the area.”

Dean agreed to make the call to Ellen, check in, listen to the well-reasoned directives that he would under no circumstances follow. Sam left a few minutes later, and it was only as the silence fell around them that Dean realized he was alone with Castiel, in the middle of nowhere, with absolutely no idea what to say.

Castiel still wore the filmy linen pants Crowley had put him in. He wandered the house, barefoot, bare-chested, touching everything with equally misplaced reverence. Dean couldn’t take his eyes off him, off the great black wings that trailed behind him, relaxed. He was only slightly shorter than Dean, trim, compact, his skin completely flawless and stitched in tight over the neat cut muscle of his torso. Dean desperately needed a distraction.

“So you…uh….you want something to eat? You hungry?”

“I don’t feel hunger.” Castiel turned his attention on Dean. “But I would like to try eating food. Humans enjoy it, don’t they?”

“Yeah, they do.” He hurried to the kitchen and riffled through each cabinet. “.…Um, maybe we wait for Sam to get back so I can cook you something nice. All they got here is stale pasta and some beans and that’s a pretty shitty introduction.” Why the hell had he even suggested it?

“I would like that,” Castiel’s eyes lit up and he crossed the room, his wings expanding out behind him. He moved right into Dean’s space, face inches away, and Dean froze, overwhelmed by the blue of his eyes and the soft pink slash of his lips. He jerked back and shook himself. Christ this guy…..

“You need clothes.”

He cut hard and fast for the bedroom, grateful to Sam when he found his duffle propped in the corner of the room. He grabbed the first set of clean clothing he touched.

“Here,” he jammed the bundle at Castiel when he turned to find the man just inside the door. “Put this on.”

He didn’t wait for a response, dug up his phone and hurried to the nearest private corner of the house.

“I should have your fucking badge!” Ellen screamed after picking up on the first ring. That was never a good sign, it meant she’d been waiting on his call. “Can you even begin to comprehend the kind of cleanup we had to do down there?! The only silver lining is that what they had going on was so goddamned illegal no one will admit to being in the same time zone!”

“What about Crowley?” Dean still hadn’t been able to shake the sense he was watching somehow, that if he turned a little to the left he would spot the man standing just outside the window.

“In the wind, we got nothing, but our people confirmed he wasn’t among the dead. Tell me you got the angel.”

“Yup.”

Crowley had him, now Dean had him and if the all went according to plan, the FBLA was next in line. It wasn’t like him to dwell on thoughts like that, not when the job saved lives, but talk of passing Castiel through a chain of hands, each with their own agenda, wound his gut in a messy knot.

“Good, that’s—wait, is he like Gabriel?”

He thought of fierce blue eyes staring out behind gold bars. He thought of inky black wings scythed through enemies and how they ran like silk over his skin. He thought of a curious smile that made him feel every hard, dirty mile and every fucked-up choice he’d ever made with unfamiliar regret.

“No. He’s nothing like Gabriel.”

~:~

The benefits of partnering with his brother far outweighed the irritations, Dean thought, especially during those frequent times when Sam knew just what Dean needed. He’d brought home all the necessities for a real cookout, they didn’t often get a chance to stay somewhere with a decent grill, a full kitchen and an honest to God back porch. Dean fell on the bags, groaning happily as he pulled out the ground meat, the many little jars of spices and two frozen pies. Sam had splurged on really good beer and there were even ingredients to make the cinnamon pancakes that were his favorite. Dean grinned at his brother’s hopeful expression as he put the syrup away.

“Hey Cas!” Dean called, pulling out bowls and utensils. “Get in here, I’m gonna teach you some life skills!”

The sound of bare feet padding down the hall.

“Whoa, Cas, your wings,” Sam exclaimed when the angel finally joined them.

“Yeah,” Dean didn’t stop what he was doing or bother turning around. “Looks like he can hide them away if he needs to.” It was with conscious effort that he kept the disappointment out of his voice. It was completely ridiculous. No wings meant he wouldn’t have to cut holes in all his shirts or cover Cas with a blanket any time they stopped to get gas, it was a good thing.

“That makes sense,” Sam hummed. “We never saw Ga-“ He pulled up short. “There was never any mention of how wings work in the lore.”

“I would be happy to answer any questions you may have,”Castiel offered.

“Later,” Dean cut in. Sam had _‘Well, actually….’_ loaded in the chamber and he wasn’t in the mood to switch gears. “I gotta show Cas what goes into a decent burger and you gotta do whatever it is you were plannin’ on doing with all these vegetables cause I sure as shit ain’t cooking ‘em.”

Castiel learned how to clean shrimp while Dean made the marinade.  He dug his bare hands into the bowl of hamburger, mixing the shades of pink from the different types of meat with the colorful mounds of spices. The two of them stood shoulder to shoulder forming patties, Dean grinning at Castiel’s pure determination to get it right, praising each round disk like Cas had just hit a home run. They shucked corn on the back porch, silk getting everywhere. Dean found a fat green earworm in one of his, Sam laughing when he’d yelled and chucked it to the ground. He scowled at his brother, ready to crush the disgusting thing under his boot, but Castiel picked up the ear and walked across the small yard, tucking it against the base of a tree.

“He means no harm,” Castiel said when he found the brothers watching him. “And we have plenty.”

Dean was quiet after that, Sam would say broody, but he wasn’t scowling, wasn’t curt. He gave Cas a beer and showed him how to toast, patted his back when he coughed in surprise at the bubbles. It wasn’t until they’d all sat down together, when Castiel took his first bite of a perfectly cooked, homemade burger and groaned, banged his knees against the table in his excitement to tell the brothers how amazing this food was, his words muffled and his cheeks full, it wasn’t until then that Dean finally spoke again.

“I talked to Ellen,” Sam froze and shot a side look at Castiel, but Dean only nodded. He’d decided. He wasn’t going to have this conversation behind Cas’ back, he wasn’t going to treat him like cargo, or con him or do any of the other things he might have done to complete his objective. Cas wasn’t like any other creature they’d met, he deserved to have a choice. “Crowley’s disappeared and she wants us to bring Cas in right away.”

Castiel had stilled at the mention of Crowley, his expression going stormy, hard.

“Okay,” Sam drew the word out carefully, still unsure how much his brother was prepared to reveal, which was typically nothing. “So we head out tomorrow.”

“Cas, listen to me.” Dean’s voice pitched low and solemn. “Sam and I, we work for people that deal with the kinds of things Crowley had locked up in cages back there. We hunt them mostly, put them down when they start killing because nine out of ten want to crack open innocent people and feast on their insides. But our people? They also want to learn, that’s the other half of it. Spellcraft, sacred artifacts, the occult, things they’ve never encountered before….things like you.”

“You want me to go with you, to meet the people you work for.” His expression remained carefully blank, eyes tracking between the brothers.

“Yes,” Sam said. “There’s very little we know about angels. It would be an enormous benefit to find out more about your kind.”

“But only if you want to.” Dean cut it. “If you wanna fly back home, return to the nest, or whatever you got up there, forget you ever set foot on this place, you can do that. We won’t stop you, hell, I’ll pack you a lunch.”

“We’re already eating.” Castiel stated, a confused slant to his head.

“Yeah it’s- nevermind. Point being, our job is to help folks that need helping and that means if you don’t want to come with us, you don’t have to. It’s your choice.” Ellen would be pissed at him, but when wasn’t she?

“I can’t go back,” Castiel shrugged, looking at his plate. “I have been shut out of Heaven until I can prove Crowley hasn’t corrupted me in some way. If I try to go back now, I will be killed. They have no reason to take such a risk on a lower order angel like myself.”

Dean took in the slump of his shoulders, slack hands sliding into Castiel’s lap, he stared at him until Cas looked up, caught his gaze, lost and bright, and held it. _Fuck that,_ Dean thought.

“How do you know?” Sam asked. “Have you talked to them? I mean, we can vouch for you, tell them we got you outta there before Crowley could pull anything.” When it really mattered, Sam always took his side.

Castiel shook his head, “I can’t hear them anymore. Ever since Crowley captured me, their voices have been silent. I thought that had been his doing, but they continue to shut me out. I know what it means and they will not hear me until Crowley is dead.”

“Then we kill him.”

“Dean, I cannot ask that of you. Crowley will be looking for me and he will almost certainly kill you both if you try to interfere. You were lucky the first time, but now you must let me handle him alone.”

“First of all, luck had fuck all to do with it,” Dean pointed at Castiel. “Tracking and killing things like Crowley is literally in our job description and we’re really goddamned good at it. Second, he got the better of you last time, and we have no way of knowing what other tricks he has up his sleeve. You need help, so let’s make a deal. You come with us to the Vault, it’s safe there, there’s no way Crowley can get in. You answer a few hundred questions, let them measure your wings or whatever and Sam and I will hunt down that fat little gremlin and kill him so you can go home.”

“He’s not a gremlin. You will be unsuccessful if you attempt- “

“Cas,” Dean sighed. “I know what he is. What d’you say, sound like a plan?”

~:~

It was well past 2am when Dean finally trudged upstairs, ready for sleep. Out of habit, he looked in on Sam, waited until he’d seen the rise and fall of his breathing, closed the door gently and shuffled down the hall, paused at the door to Castiel’s room before peeking in to check on him as well.

It was empty.

“Cas?” He whispered, just in case he was somewhere in the dark. Only silence. He checked the bathroom, his own room, returned downstairs and scoured every room, every closet, panic building. He grabbed his gun, checked the clip and slipped out the door, eyes on the night-black tree line looming ahead.

“ _Cas_!” He hissed, creeping around the perimeter of the house, gun at his shoulder, ready. Something large shifted behind him and he turned, aimed high and just barely stopped himself from shooting Castiel where he stood, illuminated in the faint moonlight, up on the roof.

“ _Sonovafuckingbitch Cas you almost caught a bullet! What the hell are you doing up there?_ ” He whispered as loud as he dared, trying not to wake Sam.

“I like it here.” Castiel stated, loud and clear.

“ _Shhhhh! Cas, will you get off the damned roof?”_

“No, thank you.” And he stretched out on his back, hands behind his head, completely unconcerned. Dean cursed, clicked the safety back on and stomped into the house. Castiel lay comfortably just outside Dean’s bedroom window, staring up at the stars. Dean hauled open the sash and ducked through, swung a leg over to straddle the window frame, because he wasn’t about to break his neck falling off the roof in the middle of the night.

“So what’s this, you tryin’ to find home up there?”

Castiel chuckled, gravel edged but warm. Dean breathed deep through his nose of the sharp night air, and made sure he didn’t seek out the lean line of him revealed in soft brushes of moonlight, the strong cords of muscles bunching in his arms where they flexed beneath his head. Castiel was barefoot and relaxed, the loose hem of his borrowed jeans riding low on his hips. Not that Dean noticed.

“My home is beyond earthly perception.” And he turned his gaze back to the sky. It was cloudy out, not the best night for star gazing.

“You miss it?”

“Yes, I suppose. I miss it as anyone would if it was all they’d known. There’s order there, ancient hierarchies that have guided us throughout our existence. Every day I knew my task and how to complete it. I had a place, directives that employed my exact strengths so I could best contribute to the whole.”

“Like a bumblebee.”

“What?” Castiel turned to him, confused.

“You know…buzz buzz? Make honey, protect the queen, all for one and one for all?”

“I cannot make honey, and we don’t have a queen. We have the Host of Archangels that- “

“Cas, why are you on the roof?”

“Oh- I- “ Castiel hesitated. “It was kind of you to give me that room, I do appreciate it, but I don’t require sleep. And-- my attempts to lay on the bed in darkness, alone, make me feel too much like I’m still….chained……with Crowley.”

“I get that.” Dean murmured, the two of them falling quiet, insects filling the void with their rattle and drone.

“It’s disorienting, having all that open space up there.” Face turned to the sky, Castiel sounded like he was smiling. “When angels fly, we navigate with the earth above us.”

“So you’re telling me when you’re walking around down here, it feels like you’re upside-down?”

“In a way, yes. Earth is very strange.”

“Yeah, you’re not wrong about that. But we’ve got some pretty awesome stuff down here, too. Up here-- whatever.”

Castiel turned on his side, curled with his head propped in his hand, staring at Dean. “Like you. I didn’t know humans could be so remarkable.”

Dean shifted, uncomfortable in the face of sincerity like that. “I think you just need to meet more people.” He laughed nervously. “Then you’ll realize an expertise in hustling pool and burning corpses aren’t exactly desirable traits.”

Castiel didn’t say a word but didn’t look away. It was that feeling of being held down again, held onto, and Dean couldn’t tear himself from it. There had been so many other times when Dean fell under someone’s attention: hatred, lust, or stark, familiar predation. But never had it been this heavy, with Castiel looking at him as if captivated by something Dean couldn’t begin to guess at. It made him want to shrink away and reach out at the same time, reach for something honest that might clear the pollution from his mind.

“Desire isn’t something angels experience often.” Castiel eventually replied. “I find I want to know more about it. I want to know everything.”

It made Dean want to run.

~:~

They’d been driving since the early morning, hours speeding down highways and across side roads and over bridges, and Dean had begun to apologize at the lack of scenery and the monotony of the road, but Castiel didn’t know what he was talking about because riding in a car was fascinating. There were houses to look at, and trees that changed pattern and color the farther they rode. There weren’t many other cars this early, but there were huge trucks with brightly colored sides. Billboards whizzed past, too fast for Castiel to read, but it was fun to try anyway. The engine roared, Dean put on music that was loud and exciting and tried to explain it to him, but Castiel felt that this music he enjoyed so much wasn’t something you could explain so much as feel. They stopped at a diner where Dean ordered food he assured Castiel he would like.

“Do they have burgers?” Castiel asked hopefully as they were lead to their booth.

“They’ve got lots of stuff here, you can try something new.” Sam suggested.

“He wants a burger,” Dean grinned, sliding in next to Castiel and nudging his shoulder playfully. “Let the man have what he wants.”

“And coffee.” Castiel added.

Castiel had discovered he liked coffee very much. He ordered it at every meal that day, tagged along with Dean at the gas station so he could add an extra-large cup to the snack haul, and when they found a suitable motel for the night, Castiel let out a happy exclamation at the sight of a small, battered coffee machine that burbled out a single cup. Dean slipped out to get ice, and when he returned, it was with a small trash bag filled with coffee pods.

“Don’t tell housekeeping.” He’d winked at Castiel as he handed over the stash. He had no idea what Dean was talking about, but felt a deep press of warmth in his chest at the gesture.

There were two beds in the room, hadn’t seemed like an issue when they’d arrived, but when it came time for the brothers to retire, Castiel watched both of them stall, trading looks. Sam’s eyebrow raised as he fought to erase a tiny smile.

“So Dean, what’s the plan?”

“I- “ Dean looked between the two beds and the three people as if puzzling out a solution with dire consequences. “Cas, you take this one, I’ll crash in the car.” He took up the leather jacket slung over a chair.

“You don’t have to do that,” Castiel stopped him. “You’ve been driving all day, your human body needs to rest, mine does not. I can sit in this chair and watch over you.”

“OK, that’s just creepy.”

“Dean can share with me.” Sam shrugged, that same smile as if he knew something Castiel did not.

“I’d like to wake up tomorrow without anything broken, thanks.”

“Then _Cas_ can sleep with me.”

“ _No_!” Dean barely let his brother finish the sentence. “No- uh….um look, Cas, you can share with me. Just don’t steal the covers or like, stare at me in the dark, got it?”

“I have it.” Castiel nodded, serious.

When they were on a hunt, both brothers had a habit of going to bed fully dressed, and if there were demons involved they slept in their boots. But when they weren’t, Dean typically stripped down to his briefs for comfort. He didn’t think anything of it until the moment he slid under the covers and witnessed Castiel observing him carefully before doing the same. He made a strangled, choking sound as the angel shed the last layer, crawling up from the end of the bed. Castiel paused, sitting back on his heels.

“Is this alright?” He looked down at his partial nudity, glanced over at Sam who was in a similar state of undress.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Dean grit out. He seemed suddenly angry, though he was doing his best to hide it. “Just get in here.” He threw back the covers and Castiel couldn’t stop himself from staring at his bare chest, the divots of his abs and the firm, tanned skin that Castiel suddenly wanted to know under his hands. The brightness of Dean’s soul flared and it was like he could feel that soul within his own body, liquid hot and suffusing him with the acute awareness of his earthly flesh and bone. An unconscious gesture, biting into the swell of his own bottom lip as he stretched out beside Dean, but Dean’s focus narrowed on his mouth for one elongated moment before flipping the covers over both of them and rolling away.

“Just stay on your side.” He muttered. And Castiel nodded, though Dean couldn’t see.

~:~

It had been a long time since Dean had shared a bed with anyone that didn’t operate on the assumption one or both parties would be heading out before any real sleeping occurred.

He found that he hated it.

Not that is was uncomfortable. Far from it. It was too comfortable, too easy to chase Castiel’s heat, too easy to reach out, twine limbs, press together or better still, get Castiel solidly beneath him, fingers buried in his hair and face buried in his neck. Why the ever-loving fuck had he thought this would work?

For a guy that insisted he didn’t need to sleep, Castiel sure as hell took to it fast. For the hundredth time that night, Dean brushed up innocuously against him and was immediately thrown awake. The covers had slipped to the foot of the bed, the first light of dawn touching Castiel’s bare skin with graceful coolness, pale and soft. Laid out on his back, hands draped above his head and legs half splayed, he was art. He was a living, breathing paean to masculine beauty, angelic even in the cheap, rumpled sheets of a shitty roadside motel.

A shift, and that’s when Dean noticed. God he was—Cas was _hard_. The plump line of his erection straining against the smooth fabric of the brand new briefs Dean had bought him. He pulled a sharp breath and could practically _smell_ it. His mouth flooded with saliva, the muscles of his stomach contracting painfully tight because he _wanted_. Fuck he never knew he could want something so goddamned much.

_Fuck fuck fuck…._

Rolling on his back, Dean squeezed his eyes shut, fisted his own hair.

“Dean?”

Castiel blinked at him, clear eyed but voice a bit groggy. The crease between his brows deepened when his attention was drawn down to the prominent tent in his own briefs.

“What….. _oh_!” He exhaled in surprise at the curious prod of his own fingers against the meat of his shaft. The dry, hard click of Dean’s throat as he swallowed sounded like a pistol cocking in his ears. “Dean look it’s…..”

“What, you never woke up with morning wood before?”

Castiel used three fingers this time to knead his erection, hips jerking in time with his harsh inhale. “I’ve never slept before! This is new, my body….I can _feel_ things. It’s good but also….needful.” He hummed thoughtfully, continuing to test the range of sensation.

Dean batted Castiel’s hand away, he couldn’t take the sight of him toying with his shiny new hard on anymore. Not if he wanted to avoid stripping the angel completely naked and showing him just how he should stroke that pretty cock, teasing him long and slow, hiking one leg up and wrapping Cas’ own hand around himself, coaxing him on, telling him exactly what to do, how fast, how hard, teaching him how to take his pleasure and watching him break apart. Watching….watching him…..

“Just leave it alone and it’ll go away.” Dean growled. “It happens to everyone.” He didn’t offer to reveal his own, similar situation out of solidarity, yanked the sheets up a little higher.

“I dreamt!” The shift in focus didn’t seem to bother Castiel. “I had a dream, in my mind! Isn’t that exciting?”

It was hard not to smile at Cas’ enthusiasm, some of the inconvenient desire bleeding out into fondness at the angel’s simple joy.

“Well that’s big, right? Tell me about it.”

“I dreamt I was flying!” Dean snorted. “There were great, tall pines above me, covered in snow, the sun rising below me and you were there beside me, you—“ Castiel’s eyes went very wide, stoppered his words with a hand to the mouth, looking at Dean as if he’d made a terrible mistake.

“What? Did I crash and burn? At least tell me I had cool ass wings too.”

“Your wings were beautiful, it’s just…..I’m sorry, I didn’t mean- I’ve never had a dream before. I couldn’t control- “

“Cas, what’s the problem?” Castiel blushed, and Dean’s palms began to itch at the sight.

“It’s…. _intimate_. When two angels choose to join their lives, they display their intentions by flying beside one another for years so that all who know them come to see them as one, inseparable.”

“So you had a, what, a sex dream about me?” The breathless tremor in his voice more than obvious, there was no passing it off as casual. Thankfully, Castiel seemed too burdened by his own embarrassment to notice.

“No we…..angels mate much as humans do……physically speaking. But most only do it after the courting tradition is complete, which can take many years. Tethered flight is the first ritual. A typical courtship can last a hundred years or more before they move on to…to…touch.”

“Is that how long it took you? To…uh….touch your mate?” He husked out, and _oh my god Dean you monstrous fucking asshole._

He was US agent with the FBLA, tasked with protecting this rare, incredible creature, possibly the only thing in his messed up existence he could ever categorized as genuinely, profoundly _good_ , and here he was fishing for competition like Cas was some evening’s prospect.

“I don’t have a……mate…..” Castiel’s voice drifted, his eyes searching Dean’s own.

It wasn’t right. Dean had no right look at Cas this way, to encourage, no right to fill the ravenous maul of wanting that opened wider every minute he spent with Castiel, a split in a fraying seam, running until there was nothing left to tear. Before he’d met Cas, Dean could pretend that his classified knowledge of the unknown, his skill with a gun, the steady heartbeat when something vicious had him bare-handed in the dirt made him better than the average man. He saved lives. But he couldn’t lie here in bed with an honest to god angel and keep up that internal façade. He saved lives, but he broke them, too. There were choices out there, ones that betrayed and ruined and cut deep into good, honest folks. He’d driven people from their homes, murdered parents in front of their children with no way of explaining the invasive evil inside them had won. He’d dragged his brother into this life because he was too scared to face it alone, gave him shit whenever he suggested an end of the road that might include a little bit of peace.

Weighing their differences made Dean sick with the comparison, the idea that he would taint Castiel with his crude desires when he clearly didn’t know any better. And yet Dean was still so dangerously close to giving in

“Don’t worry, Cas,” He said, dragging himself to his feet. “I promise I’ll get you home safe so you can find a nice angel mate that deserves you.”

He fled to the bathroom and locked the door, careful not to look in the mirror too long.

~:~

The next morning, Dean caught several very lucky breaks. The diner was completely out of bacon. Their waitress spilled a scalding bowl of soup on his lap that was meant for the next table, and what kind of animal orders soup at eight in the morning? There was a freeway accident that locked up traffic for an hour before they finally drove past and realized it had happened on the _other_ side of the freeway and what they’d been sitting in this whole time was  purely rubbernecking. And then there was Sam, with a brand new notebook and unlimited questions who would not stop grinning at Castiel and would not, for five minutes, shut the fuck up.

In this way, when they stopped early for the evening, Dean could get two rooms, could pawn Castiel off on Sam and claim he needed a break from the two of them as he hauled his duffle into the room next door. The day’s irritations could also be blamed for why he immediately peeled out and found himself at the closest available bar.

“So,” Sam jumped right in when Dean finally stumbled through the door of his motel room much, much later.

“I’m pretty sure I paid for two rooms so I could get a little time away from your ass. You should be watching Cas.”

“Cas is fine, but you’re clearly not. You’ve been an asshole all day and don’t try to tell me it was _traffic_ because we’ve lived in that car for the last six years and I’m not sure you notice it anymore.”

“You know what I do notice? I notice that we’re barely out of the gate and you can’t wait to start jerking off your I-got-a head-start boner so you can jizz your fucking _conclusions_ about angels all over the research techs faces when we get there!”

“Wow,” Sam laughed. “You got a whole pornographic narrative in that one, I’m impressed. And I’m not trying to do their research for them- “

“Oh, bullshit,” Dean spit out, seeing his opening and taking it. “You’ve been looking for a way to transfer departments for years. A college dropout whose only professional experience is as a hunter, you know they’d never take you unless you can show them something big. Well now you have your shot, don’t you?”

“This again!?” Sam practically screamed, the whole history of this argument pricking to the surface in a flash. He whirled around to get a handle on his anger. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, I – Oh you conniving bastard…..”

If Dean had been sober, or closer to sober than he was now, he would have been able to hide his triumphant little sneer once Sam turned back around to face him. But his features were too slow on the uptake, and Sam knew immediately he’d been had. _Shit_.

“Thought so.” Sam, totally calm now, was wearing that _look_ , shoehorning as much meaning into those two words as he could manage, which for Dean’s brother was a lot.

“You thought what?” Dean narrowed his eyes and squared off because there was forty-five minutes worth of Dr. Phil bullshit on the other side of that expression and he wanted to make sure it got nipped in the bud.

“You and Cas.” Jesus he was going to take the long route.

“You got some kind of a point you’re planning on making?”

“I heard you, this morning at the other motel. I heard you talking.”

Blood drained from his face, pooled sickly in his chest, Dean frantically tried to remember the exact conversation he and Cas had had while lying in bed, but pieces were missing.

“So? We just talked, he had a dream or something, it was no big deal.”

“Like it was no big deal when he shot you up with sex mojo or whatever that was and you didn’t _immediately_ put a gun to his head?”

“He didn’t know- “

“Or the fact that you spent a whole day teaching him about all your favorite things and then let him drive your car around the Winn-Dixie parking lot for almost an hour? Which is practically a declaration of intent to propose coming from you?”

“Whatever it is you’re trying to imply here, you’re way off base.” Dean hissed. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I’ve been trying to create some boundaries today? I saved him, and yeah, I get how maybe Cas might have some feelings because of that, but I just wanted to make sure he gets the point that it’s a line he shouldn’t cross.”

“Dean,” Sam sighed. “Can we just not….do this? I’m not blind and I’m not stupid. He’s been with us for, like, almost four days now and I know how you get if someone’s crossing a line with you for fifteen seconds, and it’s not whatever this is.”

“There’s no this! And stop giving me that stupid fucking pity look, will you? I’m just—he’s—I don’t even swing that way.” Sam leveled him with his pursed lipped _oh really_ look. “Often! Ok? _Often_. And that’s only when I—you know what, I don’t need to explain anything to you cause there’s nothing to explain. He’s a job. We can’t forget that. We take him to the Vault, get him checked out, go kill Crowley and he’s free to fly away back to where he came from. End of story.”

“So that’s all it is for you?”

And there was clearly going to be so much more coming after that but Dean just couldn’t deal with it right now. His defenses were too thin and he was pretty sure Sam knew it. “Are we done powdering our vaginas cause I got better things to do like sleep.”

“Fine, be a dick all you want to me, but Cas doesn’t deserve it. He’s put all his trust in you and we got a long way to go, so work out your issues.”

Sam closed the door softly behind him as he left, footsteps carrying him away.

 “Got no issues man!”

~:~

After a fitful night, a crappy shower and a full-bodied resolve not to change a damn thing about the way he’d been acting just to shove it back in Sam’s face, Dean headed out to toss his bag in the car. Slamming the trunk closed, he looked back at the motel, only then noticing Castiel, curled up on the roof, asleep. With a sigh, all the bitter fight drained from him as Dean recalled their conversation, the fear of being enclosed in the dark. He also remembered how peacefully Castiel had slept beside him, having Sam in the room apparently wasn’t enough and a tight curl of strange satisfaction wound and set inside him.

“Cas,” There was no way he was getting up there uninjured. He grabbed a handful of the smallest pebbles he could find and tossed them in a spray at the space beside Cas. “Wake up.”

As if the command was all it took, Castiel rolled over and stretched, standing gracefully and perching at the edge of the roof. “Good morning, Dean.”

“Will you get down from there? You’re making me nervous.”

“I can’t fall.” And if to make his point, Castiel jumped. For the split second it took for him to reach the ground, a shadow stretched across the face of the building, the breadth of wings.

“Way to stick the landing, Mary Lou.” It was impossible not to return Castiel’s easy smile. “Let’s go get some food, I’m starving.” He clapped Castiel on the shoulder and nodded at his baby.

“But Sam is still asleep, should we wake him?”

“You snooze, you lose. We’ll bring him back something greasy so he can bitch about cholesterol. Trust me, it’s his favorite thing to do.”

They found a chain restaurant, a sprawling thing with a bar up front and several sections that were almost entirely empty except for the two other tables besides their own. The waitress was on the younger end of fifteen and clearly overwhelmed with the task of taking their orders and remembering them between the table and the kitchen. She came back three times to confirm the style of their eggs and if they wanted coffee, which they already had, each time her voice taking on a high tremor, apologies stacked one atop the other.

“I’m sorry, did you- did you want the link sausage or the patty kind?” She looked close to tears.

Castiel smiled at her, “I’ve never had either. Which one is your favorite?”

“Um…the umm…” She seemed momentarily stunned under Castiel’s focus. Having been on the other end of those blue eyes more than a few times in the last couple days, Dean knew how she felt. “The patties?”

“Then I’m sure they’re excellent, I’ll have those, thank you.” She mumbled something and lit off to the kitchen. At least when their food came out it was all correct. Halfway through the meal she returned to check, and full swooned when Castiel touched her arm and told her what a wonderful job she was doing.

“Now you’ve gone and done it,” Dean chuckled. “That girl’s gonna start scribbling your name in her notebook the minute we’re outta here.”

“I don’t believe I told her my name.”

“Handsome Stranger will have to do then.”

Castiel set down his fork. “You think I’m handsome.”

And Dean’s throat went dry, and he couldn’t look away. “You’re not so bad.”

“I find you very handsome as well.” Simple as that, like it hadn’t cost a thing.

“Yeah, well, the outside gets me looks now and then, but the inside’s a hot flaming mess. Eat your potatoes before I come after them.”

In the silence while they ate, there was precious little to distract him from Castiel, so it wasn’t with a whole lot of regret that Dean listened in on the conversation at the table diagonal.

“I can’t do it anymore, Charles. I’m going insane. Everywhere we go, no matter where we move, that thing follows us. I don’t think it’s going to stop until we’re both dead. We told Olivia she only had to stay with my mom for a little while- “

“I know, honey,” The man, clearly her husband, took her hand. “We’ll find someone else, another…..” He looked around to be sure no one was listening, but Dean’s attention was already rapt. “Specialist.”

“It’s no use…no use.” The woman groaned, miserable.

“Dean?” Castiel’s hand rested over Dean’s. “What is it?”

There was one sure-fire way Dean had found to take his mind off just about anything that was getting at him, like the briefest touch from dark haired angel that sang up his arm to his teeth.

“Want to see what there is to do around here for fun?”

~:~

“That was so fucking stupid Dean!” Sam yelled over the wind that roared into the open car windows as they sped down the highway. Dean laughed, the soot caked on his face making the crinkles around his eyes more pronounce. In the backseat, Castiel couldn’t sit still.

“That was amazing! Dean did you see when it threw Sam across the room and I took the poker and stabbed it!”

“I know man, you’re a born natural!”

“This was not what we were supposed to do! The protocol is to call it in and let the Skips handle the- “

“Blah blah blah, Sammy you need to lighten up. Cas can handle himself just fine! He’s the one that figured out it was the _frame_ , not the photo that spook was livin’ in, what Skip was going to catch that?”

“That was _not_ a level one specter, Dean! Cas could have gotten hurt!”

“Hey Cas, remember when it had Sam hanging by the ankles and dropped him on his head when you broke the frame?” Dean’s shit eating grin directed straight at Sam. “Man I wish I’d gotten a video of that.”

“Don’t be upset, Sam,” Castiel’s voice was barely audible over the roar of their flight but it cut through both brothers all the same. “We helped those people. They can live without fear now, they can bring their daughter home, assured that she’s safe. _We_ did that and it’s…..miraculous.”

Castiel sank back into his seat, a far off look on his face. The car fell silent.

“But don’t angels help people?” Sam asked later that night when they’d stopped for food. “That’s what the lore said.”

“They did once, a very long time ago.” Castiel mused. “But there was a divide, and war was inevitable. The only way to stop it was to remove ourselves entirely from your plane. We do not interfere with humans , angels aren’t even supposed to come here unless they’re of the highest order and even then under strict instruction to remain unseen.”

“So you were the little rule breaker then, huh?” Dean asked.

“Yes,” Castiel sighed. “And should I ever return, I will be punished for it.”

Dean frowned but kept his mouth shut.

At the motel down the road, Dean requested one room, two beds. It was close to midnight when he returned to the car with the keys, but Sam was alone. With a pointed look up for his brother’s benefit, Sam grabbed his things and disappeared into the room.

The wide peaked roof of the motel sloped low enough that Dean had an easy time boosting himself up off the air conditioning unit out back. Castiel had taken both spare blankets from the car, spreading them out along the gritty tiles that were still warm from the day’s hot sun. It smelled like tar and car exhaust up here, sweetness from the dried out grasses of the field out back, and clean salt-skin scent that was Castiel. Dean picked his way over and stretched out beside the angel.

“You don’t have to sleep here tonight, I got us- well we can share again…..if you want. Or not, s’up to you.” Castiel didn’t respond and Dean wasn’t ready to leave just yet if Cas didn’t plan on following. “Maybe Sam was right, maybe I shouldn’t have thrown you into it like that today, but you were really great back there, just sayin’.”

“Angels don’t need help.” Castiel kept his eyes on the meager stars. “We know our place, we know our task. There is harmony, there is order.”

“Sounds, uh…..peaceful.”

“It is. An endless, tedious peace. I’ve never felt as useful there as I did to those people today. I don’t think I will ever forget that. Thank you.”

“Well if you liked that, tomorrow, I’m gonna take you to this place that’s got herds of wild Mustangs. I’ve been all over this country and I can tell you it’s one of the most incredible sights you’ll ever see.”

“I doubt they could compare to your soul.” Castiel stated, honest and plain.

“Well shoot Cas, you sure make a guy feel special.” Dean joked.

And when Castiel turned to smile at him, genuinely happy, Dean kissed him. A simple press of lips held for a moment, chaste and without urgency. Cas’ hands lifted and fluttered in the air a bit with a desire to hold on, but Dean wasn’t touching him any other way so he let his hands drop and pulled back, searching Dean with confusion and hope.

“Dean? Why did you do that?”

Excellent question, why had he done it?

He’d kissed men before, not often, never openly. Dean figured he’d managed a pretty healthy acceptance of his sexuality, considering how it could have gone. He never bothered to hate himself for those feelings when they surfaced, there was plenty more to hate that did a much better job at shoving its glass shards into where he was soft. But it didn’t take a genius to work out the lay of the land from where he stood. The types of towns they passed through, the hunter circles they ran with, even if he had been open about these occasional desires, it would have only made things more difficult in a world that was difficult enough as it was. So he found a nice hidden corner for these sorts of things and let them be satisfied with the darker moments of his life. The times when he itched for something secret and needy and shameful to cover over some other recent shame. Those men knew the drill, didn’t mind when things got a little brutal, didn’t ask for names, didn’t need to linger much after the fluids were cleaned.

It clicked then, why exactly he’d been so angry, why he’d fought against what he was feeling for Cas. There’d never been anything but flash-bright lust with other men, pain-laced and cleansing, but not anything to remember fondly and that association had hardened and set for Dean a very long time ago. But he _liked_ Cas, and Cas liked him. And he didn’t want the taint of those other encounters to loom over the angel. Castiel looked at him and he felt like this was someone that could see him, all of him, without flinching. He was beautiful and sexy and open as the sky and for the first time Dean felt like he was looking at someone that wouldn’t just give him an hour of release and a clear head. Cas felt good for him, that if he touched him, it would make him better somehow. It was stupid, he knew, but he couldn’t help feeling it was true.

He curled an arm around Cas and drew him in close and Cas went willingly. Baby steps, he thought. Maybe he could try something new for once, something that reflected some of that goodness back at Castiel, with no expectation and no push to satisfy his own desires. Castiel deserved that. Maybe someday, long after Cas was gone, Dean could find his way to being some portion of the man Castiel claimed he saw.

“It just felt like the right thing to do.”

~:~

Dean woke suddenly, flooded with adrenaline and frozen to the spot, searching for the reason every muscle was on alert.

That whistle, mild and clear out there in the open, an animal didn’t make that sound. He and Sam signaled each other like that when they hid outdoors, closing in on prey. Against his chest, Castiel was still curled up, asleep, but the moment Dean shifted, he woke. Pressing a finger to his lips for silence, Dean flipped over and crawled on his belly to the spine of the roof, peeking over, gesturing for Cas to do the same.

He didn’t see them until they were in the parking lot, materializing from the shadows, gathering in a shrinking cluster outside their motel door. Seven of them, robed in black, the chanting only audible to Dean now that they were so close. When they moved into formation, all of them removed their hoods, the intonation getting louder. One of them looked like she headed her child’s PTA, one wore earbuds and neck tattoos, nodding his head in time with the music as he chanted, and one wore a friggin’ Bluetooth earpiece, checking his chucky fake Rolex like he was late for a meeting. The rest were exactly the kind of trash he always encountered with human covens, skewing hard to the goth or the modern hippie naturalist ends of the spectrum. Didn’t mean they weren’t all dangerous, especially since they’d gathered in the number seven. It was a distinction that illustrated these were no hobbyists. The Impala was at their backs now, and he had the keys. If he could come around behind them, maybe he could get to the trunk where most of their weapons were stashed before they made their move.

“Cas,” He whispered. “We’re gonna climb down the back together. I’ll try to flank them and get to the weapons, you try to get through the back window, or find some way to signal to Sam. He’s got the front door protected, that’s what they’re trying to break right now so we got maybe three minutes before- “

“I will smite them.” Castiel snarled. In one smooth maneuver, Castiel tore the shirt from his back, his wings erupting over their heads before he was up and running, launching himself over the side of the roof.

“Yup, that’s an option, too.” He sighed, scooting on his butt until he could see the mayhem below. “Sam! Show time!” He stomped the roof below him, took a deep breath and jumped onto the back of the nearest figure, plowing him into the concrete, with one more crack of the man’s skull against the asphalt for good measure.

Once again, Dean was almost lethally distracted by the sight of Castiel in battle, he was fucking terrifying and astounding and Dean almost took a boot to the gut because he couldn’t look away. Sam burst through the door, twisting on a silencer and tossing Dean is favorite knife, because in their experience, fights broke out in shitty motel parking lots all the damn time and most people stayed out of it, but the sound of gunfire would be sure to draw the cops.

The witches were vicious though, and experienced. As fast as they could take them down, they would heal. Headshots didn’t work, nor hearts, which were always the two main spots for covens to place their binding mark. In front of him, Castiel ran a man through the side with the blade of his feathers, lifted him overhead and threw him across the lot, only to have to run at him again when the bones knit and he was tearing toward them, whole.

The grind of so many opponents that just wouldn’t stay down was starting to wear, Dean was taking more hits, his reactions slowing. He edged over to Castiel, hoping to cover him for as long as he could.

“Left hands!” Sam shouted behind him. Thank fucking God.

“That works,” Dean grinned at the woman grappling with him, the soccer mom who snapped her teeth at his face in answer. With a great, overhead swing, Dean brought the knife down on her wrist, severing it past the first bone. The woman shrieked, inhuman, as Dean grabbed ahold of her dangling hand, twisted and kicked her body away as hard as he could, the limb remaining in his grip and curling into a cracked, leathery claw.

The rest of the coven paused, a shiver going through them collectedly like a low voltage current.

“Who wants to give me a hand?” Dean crowed, covered in blood and grinning like a loon. Beside him, Sam reloaded his clip and Castiel took to the air.

~:~

The coven’s bodies, and their sundry parts (which had _not_ been easy to collect, but the last thing they needed was for that poor schlub in room eight to find a tooth in his windshield wiper) were dragged and dumped in an unruly pile in the field out back, concealed as best they could under what rocks and branches they could find. Wind whipped up with the sound of thunder miles off yet, but closing. Sam headed out immediately to find a cargo trailer to rent and to purchase the supplies they’d require for a two hour somnolence spell. That would be about the time they’d need to load up the trailer with the bodies in broad daylight without the public catching wind.

“You can, uh, take the first shower if you want.” And Dean was very proud of the fact that he managed to get the whole sentence out without blatantly ogling Castiel in his shirtless state. The wings were gone, which was a shame, but his hair was a windswept riot, his cheeks pinked with exertion under the sweat and grime. A crack of lightening flashed and took the light with it, the rain dropping in a solid sheet, so loud they had to raise their voices.

“I do not need one.” And then he was clean. Even the jeans he’d been wearing were free of blood, the small hole that had begun to fray on the right knee mended into smooth, new denim.

“Neat trick,” Dean didn’t stare, he didn’t stare, he didn’t stare.

“I can do the same for you.” Castiel reached out as if to touch him and Dean jerked away.

“Naw, man. I’ll stick with the old fashioned way, thanks.”

He kicked off his boots, peeled off his socks, his shirt. Cas was staring at him so intensely when he turned around, Dean froze. Heady, ringing silence surrounded them, and the tension that Dean had always assumed was his and his alone amplified, resonated keenly between them in a way that was all too familiar to a man of Dean’s experience. He was sure Cas didn’t know what he was doing when he licked his bottom lip, or what might happen between them if he managed to close the distance. And Dean couldn’t do this with Cas, he couldn’t, it wasn’t the same as sharing his affection with a kiss like before. If Cas kept looking at him like that, he was going to crack. So he bolted. Grabbed a towel and locked himself in the bathroom, turned on the water and spent the next minute with his forehead pressed against the door as the steam gathered, desperate to control his wits.

He scrubbed himself vigorously under the water, as if he could strip off all the filthy, depraved thoughts about what he wanted to do to that beautiful angel with a bar of cheap motel soap. He dug is fingers into his scalp and grit his teeth and finally, with a defeated sob he did his best to swallow so Cas wouldn’t hear, wrapped his fist around the erection that refused to abate and stroked himself just as hard and punishing as he had on the rest of his skin. He wanted to fuck Castiel and be fucked by him. He wanted to see what it would sound like when he found Castiel’s prostate with slick fingers. Get on his knees and choke himself on Castiel’s sweet prick until he could suck every last drop pearly come from the slit, let it coat insides, his to keep, his…..

Muscles contracting, Dean spilled in rapid bursts down the wall, down the drain. He rinsed it all away and dressed so quickly his clothes stuck to his damp skin, hair dripping, soaking his collar. Wouldn’t make much difference in a moment.

“Gotta make a call, no reception here.” He blurted out when he found Castiel sitting on the bed with an expectant look. Snatched his phone and hurried out the door. There was a breezeway a few doors down that lead to the back of the building, he made a run for it but still ended up soaking. Rain pummeled everything it touched, gushing down the gutters and walling him in on either side. Dean wiped off the droplets from his face and leaned a shoulder against the wall.

“What are you wearing right now?” He teased Agent Harvelle the moment she answered. It took his mind off things and she’d know something was up if he didn’t give her at least a little bit of shit each time he called in.

“The diamond studded strap-on I will fuck you with if you don’t give me an ETA!”

“Ok, but just so you know, my safeword is ‘Bobby’, so it could get weird.”

“Winchester!”

“Alright, look. We got hit by a coven last night and I’ll give you two guesses who they were working for. We need a mobile clean up unit that can meet us in El Paso.”

“Done, I’ll have them send you the contact and drop point shortly. Now, tell me the angel is intact.”

Dean bit down on his snarl, but not nearly enough. “Castiel.”

“What?”

“His name is _Castiel_ and he’s not a cuneiform tablet or some other delicate artifact we need to keep locked in a crate. He’s coming with us _willingly_ as part of a mutually beneficial agreement we made. Which I intend on honoring, by the way. So whatever pies Crowley had his grubby little fingers in better come to terms with the fact that I’m about to cut them off! …….Ma’am.”

“Well, then.” She clipped, letting a deliberately uncomfortable pause hang between them. “You know, I might be a bit more put off by your insubordinate tone if this weren’t the first time you’ve managed to make a friend that wasn’t Sam.”

“I- “

“You’re in luck, the boss has decided he wants Crowley neutralized after all. Report just came in that a blind spot landed in Vail, conveniently large enough to black out a twenty-acre property owned by one of Crowley’s shell corporations.”

“He’s still going to try to pull it off.”

“Good news is, at least now we know where he’s hiding out. Bad news is- “

“That won’t be the only attempt on Castiel.” Dean replied.

“Get him into lockdown.” Ellen ordered, as if it weren’t clear enough. “Then you and Sam can figure out a way through Crowley’s defenses. One of our seers had a seizure this morning trying to look past them.”

“So basically, not the sort of problem we can solve by walking up and stabbing it in the heart.”

Too bad, Plan A always had been his favorite, short and sweet.

“Not in the slightest.”

~:~

Dean shoved his phone into his back pocket, ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He turned around and Castiel was right there, drenched, hair plastered to his head, skin glowing slickly wet. Without a second’s hesitation, Castiel pressed his fingers to Dean’s lips, pressed his body back into the wall and leaned in close, voice barely audible over the violence of the downpour.

“I need more.”

And then his fingers slid away, his lips replacing them, too fast for Dean to protest. He reacted instinctively, eyes closing, returning the supple pressure as Cas pressed the closed seam of his mouth against Dean’s. Cool rain trickling down the corners of their mouths, hot breath filling him with the taste of Castiel when he parted lips and Castiel followed. He didn’t hesitate after that, or argue with himself, or even afford higher reason a crack to slip its wedge into, Dean took Castiel in both hands and kissed him as deeply as he’d been craving all this time. And God, the eager, hungry exclamation Cas made as Dean swept his tongue inside, he wanted to swallow that sound right out of Castiel’s mouth and hold it down inside his belly forever.

“I want to know,” Castiel panted, groaned when Dean dove back in, unable to help himself now that the dam had broken. He tipped his head to the other side, wrapped a hand around the back of Castiel’s neck and licked the futile words from the cavern of his mouth, bit them in two with the gentle edge of his teeth.

Whirling them around, it was Dean’s turn to trap Castiel against the wall, shoving in without breaking contact. He hauled Castiel up by the thighs, biting at his jaw and licking the rain from his neck as the angel wrapped his legs instinctively around Dean’s waist. He rocked up against him once, they both groaned at the blunted pressure against their confined cocks.

“ _Dean_!” Head thrown back against the dirty brick as Dean yanked at the sodden collar of his tshirt, stretching it irreparably down so he could access the burning skin of Castiel’s chest. “I want you everywhere, it’s not enough….”

Squeezing tighter, limbs twined, the world around them stopped, held breath and _spun_. Dean caught an impression of raindrops, suspended like diamonds, a sound rushing through him even as everything else stood still. And then they were falling, the wall no longer taking part of Castiel’s weight. The ground met his feet again and the two of them toppled onto the worn carpet of their motel room.

“What the hell?” Dean gasped, crawling backwards off Castiel in case he had hurt him. His back hit the door, still closed, lock undisturbed. Crawling after him, Castiel shoved himself between Dean’s open thighs, his eyes dark, devastatingly resolute.

“Flew,” Was all he offered before hoisting Dean’s shirt up and off, twisting the soaking fabric as it slid by his wrists, pinning Dean’s hands above his head. Water ran down Dean’s arms and Castiel chased it with his tongue, wet scrape of it rounding his bicep, the joint of his elbow, following the stark veins along his forearms.

“Jesus, Cas- “

“Will you mate with me? I feel this need to have you all over me, inside me,” He took over Dean’s lips before he could answer.

“Anything you want, _anything_ , just tell me,” Dean pulled against the restraint, but Castiel wasn’t willing to let him go just yet.

“Want you to show me. I’ve never had….I’ve never done this before. Show me what you do when you’re with someone else.”

“Can’t do that Cas. I’ve never been with anyone like you.”

“I--“ Releasing his hold on Dean’s hands, Castiel sank back, shoulders curling in. “I know I’m not-- you need a human. I understand.”

Dean scrambled to get Castiel back in his space, tossing his shirt aside to pet through Castiel’s hair, dipping his head down to catch the angel’s gaze. “Hey no, Cas, that’s not what I meant at all! Those people I was with before? What I’ve done with them wasn’t healthy, or memorable, or…or even good.” He cupped Castiel’s face in both hands and drank in the tiny details as if this were his last chance. “You’re so good. You’re the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen, I can’t believe you’re-- You don’t even know what it means to me just to have you like this, to be allowed to touch you. I shouldn’t be allowed, I’m a fucking disaster.”

“Disaster reveals us to ourselves,” Castiel smiled, lovely and subtle. “You protect and you fight and you suffer for the innocent. You have a soul that astounds me, Dean, and I ache to be near it.”

“Stand up.” Dean husked out, overwhelmed. Castiel obeyed, his bare toes flexing in the carpet, the pair of borrowed jeans sipping low on his hips and pooling at his ankles. Dean looked up at him, still on his knees. “Let me see your wings.”

Unsure at first, they materialized slowly, the tentative curl of them stretching out behind Castiel then up, their full length nearly spanning the small room. Now that he could see them, Dean couldn’t look away, unbuttoning Castiel’s pants and dragging them with his briefs down his thighs and off without turning his gaze.

And then the sight was before him, the bright and glorious angel towering above him, naked. And in that instant, Dean knew what it meant to want to worship. On his knees before a living ideal, with his own well-worn hands he could give Cas the adulation he deserved.

Following an impulse he’d never felt before, Dean wrapped both arms around Castiel’s hips and held on. Buried his face into the soft skin of his belly, breathing in the strange earthy clean scent, petrichor that mingled with the ozone from the storm. He stayed there for a long moment, until the delicate touch of fingers along his back roused him from his bliss. He moved his lips against the toned skin, wet them, traced back along the same line and found a new path. He tongued at the faint salt trace and dragged his teeth where the bone lay hard beneath the skin. Soon his hands found firm purchase at the backs of Castiel’s thighs as Dean rubbed his cheek and trailed his open mouth up and down the ruddy pink flesh of Castiel’s beautiful erection. It _was_ beautiful, so neatly proportioned and eager, velvety soft with a kiss of moisture at the tip.

Dean kissed him everywhere, loving the breathy coos he teased from Castiel as he laved each sensitive spot, loving that he knew from those surprised sounds that Castiel had never felt pleasure like this. Dean was going to give him so much more.

As he took Castiel in his mouth, slid the whole hot length of him as far as it would go, Dean wondered if angels did this, if they took the time to suck and savor their mates, bruising their knees while saliva wetted their chin. Salty rich human pleasures of the flesh. Or did they come together with graceful detachment, white lights and white robes and clean, unblemished skin. If Dean had to guess, it was door number two, with the way Castiel was gasping wantonly above him, thighs quivering deliciously with every backward pull of Dean’s talented mouth. Or maybe Cas was a virgin, maybe when he’d told Dean he didn’t have a mate…..maybe that’d meant he hadn’t ever tried. Either option filled Dean with such a wave of possessive determination, a competition between himself and any other celestial rival that might dare to have Cas this way.

Surging down onto Castiel’s cock, Dean was through with delicately easing Cas into this. He had always had particular skill in this area, and he’d loved going down on other guys solely for the opportunity it gave him to feel the debasement he, at times, felt he deserved. But there was none of that now, none of that tinder brittle need to be used up and tossed aside, now as he opened his throat and pressed his tongue in knowing, more intricate patterns along the pulse of Castiel’s shaft, he felt valuable. He bobbed his head and tugged at Castiel’s softly swollen balls and made sure the channel of his hand was wet and tight as it chased his mouth, moaning every time Castiel’s hips stuttered and his fingers tugged Dean’s hair.

“O- OH!” Castiel rasped, and Dean watched through heavy lids as each wing stretched in a different direction, flexing, feathers shivering like iridescent leaves. “It’s so good! Dean please, I-“

At the encouragement, Dean took one of his spit slick fingers and sought out the softly wrinkled furl between Cas’ cheeks. He circled it a few times, worked the tip of his finger in and took a deep breath. In one seamless move, Dean took Cas’ cock as far down as he could, pressed his finger carefully and surely up as far into Castiel’s body as he could and began to swallow around the fat blub of his head. Castiel cried out, wings lashing wide, knocking the television from the dresser and tipping a chair onto its side. He bucked deeper into Dean’s mouth and Dean took it, working his finger in deeper as well, circling inside of him and wondering how quickly he could add another because just this little point of contact where he was inside Castiel was too goddamned little to bear. He wanted more of himself inside Cas, he wanted to use every part of his body to make Castiel _weep_ with ecstasy, he wanted everything.

It’s not that Dean couldn’t be gentle, or that he didn’t want to, not at all. It was just that Castiel responded to every increase in demand, in pressure and hunger with matching force. Castiel was just as desperate, though unsure how to channel such need, so when Dean reeled back, shoved Castiel around and all but knocked him on his belly on the mattress, Castiel moaned and thrust his hips back, so very ready to take whatever Dean had planned next.

“I can’t fucking believe this is real,” Dean’s voice sounded like he’d been swallowing glass. He plamed Castiel’s cheeks open to look at the pretty pink circle of heat that contracted in anticipation even as Cas looked over his shoulder.

“This is real Dean, we’re—WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” he shrieked and arched his back in reflex to the head on assault Dean was making with his tongue. Mouthing at the sensitive rim, Dean sucked two more kisses against it before coming up for air.

“Don’t you like it? I just had to taste you but if you’re not comfortable I’ll stop.”

“NO!” Dean chucked and bit at the firm globe held securely in his right hand. “I just….angels don’t- it’s not- I thought you were going to mount me. That’s how we…..we never…..”

“Angels don’t do this?” Dean licked his lips deliberately and applied the flat of his tongue to several long, slow strokes in a row. Castiel moaned and heaved and shook his head, biting his lip so as to stifle how much he’d liked it.

“Never, it’s not proper! We- _Dean_!” Castiel twisted the sheets in his fingers as Dean dove in again, pushing his tongue in as far as he could and fucking it in and out of Castiel’s quickly loosening hole.

“I’ll show you proper. I’m gonna fuck you good and proper, how’s that? I’m gonna make you feel so good, Cas, I swear to God. Now, can I keep going? Cause you taste real fucking good and I want more.”

Whatever shy reservation Castiel had held a moment ago vanished and he nodded enthusiastically and buried his head in the mattress, ready. Dean didn’t disappoint, feasting on the concentrated flavor of sex and Castiel saturating his lips, his tongue. With every passing minute, Castiel grew louder, rutting boldly into the bed and even spreading his own ass in both hands when Dean’s touch began to wander. There was just too much of Castiel to explore, he pawed at him and caressed his thighs and up his back until he came to the muscular joint of his wings where they sprouted out between his shoulder blades. The tips of Castiel’s feathers trailed cooly over Dean’s skin, and without thinking, he wrapped one hand around the sturdy bone where it joined with Castiel’s back and squeezed. The reaction was immediate. Castiel launched himself into the air, knocking Dean back on his ass in the prosses. Dean looked up where the angel was suspended a few feet from the ground, wings flapping in aborted thrusts in the small space, causing a whirlwind of chaos. He blinked, stunned and terrified he’d hurt Castiel, but it was the angel who apologized first.

“I’m sorry! You don’t have to touch them, I don’t expect you to! I know they’re strange and inhuman and…and….”

“You think I don’t _want_ to touch your wings? Seriously?” Dean asked, incredulous.

Anything that wasn’t nailed down continued to churn around them as Castiel hovered a short distance away. “I just don’t see why you would want to.”

“Come here,” Dean growled, and then shot to his feet, boosting himself off the bed and launching himself at Castiel, tackling him to the ground. He pinned the angel on his back and drove both hands into the downy undersides of both wings. “You think I don’t want to do this? You think I haven’t been dying to get my hands on these from the moment I saw you? You’re a goddamned miracle, Cas and I want to have every part of you.” He combed through the feathers, tugging when it made Castiel moan, stroking them smooth and arching himself into them when they wrapped around him, cocooning them and they kissed.

Dean had no issue staying just like this for a good long while, but Castiel grew impatient, grinding into him and biting at his jaw.

“You’re still wearing your pants,” he huffed, as if this was the most unbearable burden he’d ever known.

“Unforgivable,” Dean hummed, kissed Castiel again just to tease him then stretched to his feet. He pulled Cas up with him, guided him to the bed that now sat decidedly askew and shucked the remainders of his clothing. He found the bottle of lube in his duffle back and tossed it down beside Cas’ leg. “Tell me how you want this. All I want is to make you come and I don’t care how that happens.”

Castiel perched up on his elbows, eyeing Dean’s erection with a resolute kind of hunger.

“I want that inside of me right now.”

“Well that seems fairly unambiguous.” Dean couldn’t help but grin, his eyes crinkling at the look of deadly seriousness Cas was shooting at his dick.

Shoving himself between Castiel’s legs, Dean poured the lube over his fingers and stroked wet circles against the soft, puckered skin.

“I don’t need this,” Castiel huffed, impatient. “You can’t hurt me.”

Dean smiled, staring Cas down as he pushed two fingers in, slow and deep, drinking in the sight of Castiel’s pleasure, how he arched into it, mouth going slack as he moaned lewdly. “Yeah, well maybe I need this.”

He took his time, because seeing Cas like this, the glossy sprawl of his wings and the high flush spreading over his chest and cheeks, hearing the lovely suffering edge to his low grit voice, was a gift Dean would never dare to accept lightly. Three fingers now, steadily rocking in and out, twisting and thrusting with a ceaseless rhythm that took over Dean’s whole body until he too was undulating against Castiel, hushing his pleas and tasting the damp of his skin until neither could stand it anymore.

“ _Need_ ,” A lone tear raced from the corner of Castiel’s eye, too quick for Dean to catch with his tongue. “Need you….”

_Anything, angel. Everything I have._

And Dean wasn’t sure if he said that out loud or simply prayed it.

“Look at me Cas,” he murmured as he guided himself against Castiel and pressed in, drinking in every shift of expression, every flicker of shocked pleasure. Castiel didn’t seem to feel any discomfort, hooked his legs around Dean’s waist and pulled him in deeper, faster than Dean was planning to go. And then they were joined, the tight burning perfection of Castiel’s body clutching and squeezing Dean so goddamned good he couldn’t catch his breath, froze, gasping for air that wouldn’t come while his whole being narrowed in on the place where he was fitted snug inside his angel. Nothing, nothing had ever been this soul wrenchingly sweet in his entire life.

“ _Cas_ ,” Groaned like a dying man as he pulled back and shoved in, stars of pleasure blinding him.

It was over after that, Dean buried his head into Castiel’s neck and thrust into him in long, thorough strokes. He snaked his arms under Cas and grabbed onto the holds of his wings, pulling the angel down onto his cock just to make him cry out louder.

“That’s it,” he growled in Castiel’s ear. “You feel me? Feel where I’m filling you up? Cause you’re _my_ angel, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Castiel sobbed, sounding for all the world like he would break down crying from the strain any second. “I can’t last, you’re so deep and it’s--! I feel it coming!”

“Do it angel, wanna make you come.”

Castiel threw his head back then looked up desperately at Dean, pressing his palm to the man’s chest, “Let me touch you with my grace, let me feel your soul, Dean!”

“Yeah,” Dean shoved into him harder, chasing, teeth clenching in his jaw. “Come on, Cas, take it.”

The flare of sensation hit him head on, that cellular, full bodied ecstasy that made him feel like his insides were hardening and liquefying all at once. The two of them clutched at one another, wailing and hanging on as it kept going and going, a feedback loop that resonated on a frequency violent enough to shatter. Coming in long, agonizing pulls that synced with the pulse of his blood. _Pulse pulse pulse_. His brain throbbing, stomach wringing tight, crying out sightless at the sensation of divinity ebbing though the base matter of his human body.

Until it released and they both collapsed.

Dean came back to his senses carding his fingers through Castiel’s sweaty feathers and sighing his name. Castiel didn’t have words, he tipped his face to look at Dean directly, his eyes so blue it nearly hurt.

An hour later, they still hadn’t moved, though neither was asleep. Keys and boot steps closed in on the door, Sam having to shove hard to open it against the debris littering the floor.

“Oh my god guys, are you kidding me?!” He yelled at the figures curled happily around each other in the midst of the destruction.

~:~

The cleanup unit met them at a rest stop five miles north of El Paso. Most people gave cleaners a wide berth, found their blank expressions and pointed questions unnerving. Dean rather liked them, though. So did Sam. They weren’t on the front lines like the Winchesters, but Dean knew that what they did was gruesome in a way that saw twenty percent sucking the business end of a shotgun within the first year. You had to have a spine of goddamned titanium to make it as a cleaner out here and Dean had a hell of a lot of respect for that.

“Hey Yaro, hey Emily!” Dean greeted the couple in dark brown coveralls as he hoped out of the car. “I thought you two were working the northeast corridor.”

“Needed a change,” Emily grunted as she shook the brothers’ hands with her fearsome grip. “I couldn’t handle the thought of trying to build one more pyre in the middle of a Maine winter. I went through five chainsaws last season!”

“Six.” Yaro corrected, meekly.

“Six! See? What’d ya got for us?”

“Seven bodies,” Sam nodded toward the trailer. “Each missing a hand. You’ll find those in the CVS bag we tossed back there. Rest is intact.”

“Hey, Winchester! You sure your count is right? I know it gets a little tricky for you road monkeys when you have to use both hands.”

The brothers had made a point of ignoring the Skip leaning against the ostentatious pickup truck parked behind the van. He wore a blinding white cowboy hat with his suit and a pair of matching boots that, you could see from the uncuffed soles where one foot was hitched up on the running board, were also brand new. They’d run into this one before but never bothered to learn his name.  Dean was amused to notice the cleaners were of the same mind.

“Any charmed clothing or tattoos we need to know about?” Emily shoved on. “Any reactive agents on or around the surrounding tissue? Oh- who’s your friend?”

They’d told Castiel to wait in the car, but it seemed the angel had felt he’d fulfilled that edict sufficiently.

“Hello.” Castiel addressed Emily then Yaro with an amusing edge of solemnity. He got like that every time he’d met someone new, not yet grasping the idea that humans didn’t adhere to any kind of strict greeting code of conduct.

“This is Cas,” Dean offered. “He’s a…uh…Hunter buddy of ours that’s hitching a ride.”

“His partner got dropped down a well by water sprite. Broke his leg in three places, so we’re borrowing Cas in the meantime.” Sam joined in, smooth as anything.

“Gonna hit some of the bigger nests they got out west.” Dean finished up, hip checking Cas and shooting him a sidelong grin.

Castiel nodded. “I am a Hunter.”

“Well isn’t that lucky for you?” The Skip sneered, unwilling to go ignored any longer. “Now you boys can have yourself a real, old-fashioned circle jerk ‘stead of just blowing each other.”

“Hey Tex,” Dean drawled. “You’re hat’s on backwards.”

Sam snorted as the guy did his best to nonchalantly turn his hat the right way.

“Maybe your friend would like to hitch a ride with me,” he taunted, trying to regain face. “I could use a mouth like that on the drive back to civilization.”

Without the slightest break in composure, Dean strode up to the Skip with an easy gate. “What’s your name again?”

The guy sneered, confident that Dean wasn’t about to assault a fellow agent. “Mit—“

In a flash of speed to rival Cas, Dean slammed the man’s head into the side of the car and watched him crumple to the asphalt.

Sam was already unchaining the back door to the trailer and hauling it up by the time Dean dragged the unconscious body over. Together they took an end and swung him carelessly onto the jumbled pile of dead witches.

“Don’t forget your hat.” Dean tossed it into the trailer like a frisbee and Sam slammed down the door, slapping the side when the chains were in place.

“Shame about this bum lock.” Sam hummed. “Might have to wait till the next town to try and fix it.” Dean slung an arm around Castiel.

“You guys hungry?” He asked the group. “I saw a barbeque joint down the road and I’m buying.”

“I could eat.” Yaro offered with a tentative shrug. It was the first time any of them had heard Emily laugh.

~:~

Just as he’d promised, Dean took Cas to a place where the land swelled with rocky hills, the valley clefts churned up to bare earth, but thick, wiry grasses painting the rest a pale green. They’d stripped their shirt in the early heat and spread them on the grass, lying side by side with the whole plain stretched before them. The clusters of scruffy Mustangs had made themselves scarce when they’d shown up, but after a peaceful half hour, the horses had returned.

Sam had the good sense to get lost. In fact, Sam was being uncharacteristically cool about the whole thing going on between his brother and their angel companion. Dean hadn’t expected that, had been ready for a short, hot fight or some torturously drawn out conversation about feelings and connections and morality, but he’d gotten neither. It never occurred to him that Sam might think he deserved this, just that he wasn’t about to question Sam’s current tact.

The two of them watched the herds play, racing through the valley, new groups meeting and dividing over the slopes of hills. Unafraid, Castiel had stretched to his feet, strolled down the slope to get closer. Wary black eyes had tracked him from all sides, but it seemed they could sense Castiel was not the usual sort of person, and certainly not a threat.

By noon, it was Dean’s turn to be astounded as he watched Castiel fly just above the backs of the running herds, racing with them, wild manes and wild feathers in the thrusting wind, the land so open beneath them, welcoming wide beneath the fleeting beauty.

And when Castiel returned to him, happily flushed, wings gleaming while the rest of him was covered in a fine layer of dust, Dean stripped them both, spread Castiel out in the grass, the oil spill of his wings stark beside his pale skin. He prepped himself quickly with the lube he’d stashed in his pocket, straddled Castiel and sank down onto his cock with praiseful sigh.

Dean undulated his hips, rose up and down as slowly as he’d ever done anything just to see the colors of surprised pleasure sweep Castiel’s features. His beautiful angel, taut with a need Dean felt overwhelmingly grateful he was allowed to satisfy. The horses galloped around them, no longer afraid, and neither was Dean. He could feel Castiel’s heartbeat thunder beneath his hands, feel it pound up through him to match his own as hoofbeats made the earth supporting them tremble.

~:~

It wasn’t Department policy that anyone traveling to the Vault had to use a non-linear route, but Dean thought it was a good idea considering how easily they’d been found before and told Sam where he could stick it when he caught a knowing look. Few more days wouldn’t make a difference, and having Cas at his side for a little longer was just an unplanned bonus.

Veering off onto the back roads, winding the map in knots as they made gradual progress circling the mid-west was probably the best week Dean had ever known. He and Sam didn’t fight once, they picked up a few quick jobs along the way and let Cas help. Castiel took to it like he’d been born to the life. Sam started teaching him what they knew about hunting while Dean sprained new face muscles grinning from one town to the next. They took him to dive bars and learned that the gnarliest biker in the joint was always the first one to crack under Castiel’s charm, usually sometime after Cas had drunk him under the table. Dean watched from his stool as yet another behemoth in a leather vest and a beard down to his gut slapped Cas on the back and wiped tears of laughter from his eyes. Castiel said something to the man, searched out Dean’s gaze and waived when he caught it. Dean found himself waiving back and couldn’t even bother to be embarrassed. Fuck, he was so done on this guy. Cas was funny and weird and giggled at things that made no sense, and drank all their coffee and was a nightmare to play poker with. Some of the barflies didn’t have a single tell and weren’t afraid of a little cheating, but Castiel sat down, knitted his brow and cleaned them all out while their beer was still cold.

Nights they spent together in a room of their own. Sam down the hall or peeling off in the Impala to do who knows what. Dean wasn’t about to waste a second of his time with Cas. He didn’t know what would happen after they’d finished with Crowley, had set Cas free, but right now, hearing Cas scream his name, falling asleep with soft kisses and waking with their fingers entwined, he could pretend that day would never come.

~:~

The Vault, like Hunters, was an element of the FBLA that was strictly off the books. An entire underground research facility where the real work got done. It was never enough to go after rogue monsters topside, they had a habit of adapting and something new was always sliding down the pike. There was a live-in staff of experts housed down there. Dorms, mess hall, rec center, computer systems so fast, so powerful, they could make you feel omnipotent, the greatest single collection of lore outside of the Vatican, everything a growing nerd could ever need. Needless to say, Sam fucking adored it. Every time they had to do a run there, Dean made sure not to take any other jobs right away, just so that Sam could have a few days, a week, to twirl through the stacks of books like an enraptured princess. Dean had never been able to take Sam to Disneyworld as a kid, but this was a close second.

The only visible portion of the Vault was a tiny white chapel with trim vinyl siding set right over the geographical crossroads. They’d erected a small marble monument, surrounded in flags a little ways off, just to throw the tourists and keep anyone with the intention of using the center point in a ritual from pulling it off. Now and then, a cheery family or car full of unwashed college students would spill out with phones in hand to take pictures of the adorable little structure, but they had that covered, too. Reverend Jessup awaited all of them with a brilliant smile and a hard sell offer on the redemption of their souls. Even the devout, who might sit for a polite minute with the preacher, soon found the walls closing in on them with so much fervor in such a cramped space. Reverend Jessup made sure anyone that lingered more than a few minutes fled for the hills.

Office gossip had it that back when he used to be an agent, the big boss man had found Jessup in a county jail on lockup for scamming retirees and thought he’d make a much better gatekeeper than the actor’s they’d been hiring that never lasted long. But the Winchesters knew what few didn’t. There wasn’t one Jessup, there were three. Three identical, six foot tall, paunch bellied, red headed pompadoured preachers that took turns behind the pulpit in 12 hour shifts and never took off the black or answered to any sort of first name. They were true believers, certainly the most reliable employees the Bureau had ever seen. Never once had Dean ever seen them together, it was against protocol. But pulling up to the chapel, here they were, carbon copies lined up like they were receiving for a wedding, smiles bright on sweaty faces. Agent Harvelle was there, along with two men Dean knew were security, probably privately contracted.

Sam got out of the car and made his way over, but Dean turned to face Cas in the back seat.

“You don’t have to do this.”

“But you asked me to.” Castiel responded, surprised.

“Yeah, but that’s not a good enough reason. What if I was lying? You don’t know what’s down there and- “

“I trust you Dean,” Castiel gave him that soft, private smile then slid out of the car.

He made it halfway across the road before Dean caught up, a chorus of Hallelujahs arising in triplicate ahead of them, Ellen already striding over in greeting.

“Cas, wait!” Dean spun him by the arm, gripping his face in both hands. “I’m coming back for you, you hear me? As soon as I put Crowley’s ashes in the ground, I’m coming to get you. I promise.”

He kissed him, wrapped his arms around Cas and held him while he memorized the soft slant of his lips, the velvet swipe of his tongue that sought his own without shame. Cas gripped the waistband of Dean’s jeans, twisted and jointed them together with an audible thud, arched and sighed into Dean’s mouth, so honest and unafraid about what he wanted that for a minute, Dean was terrified to let go. How could he trust anyone else with Cas? Even Ellen, who was as close to next of kin as the Winchesters had. How could he let them lead an angel underground, trade the sun for cold fluorescence, trade the giddy discovery of the open road- Cas in the back seat, popping his head between the brothers every five minutes, making Sam laugh with his bizarre observations- with impersonal techs sourcing data. White walls and white coats and measured voices referring to him only as ‘the subject’.

When they finally pulled apart, complete and utter silence greeted them, the three Jessups frozen in a rictus of horror, Ellen in a fresh coat of _you’ve got to be kidding me_.

“Come on, Cas,” Dean nodded towards the chapel. One thing Dean knew well- how to force left foot in front of right when the affliction of gravity colluded with his heart. “There’s a secret door and everything.”

The brothers flanked Castiel and the three of them made their way over to Agent Harvelle, who’d managed to regain control over her face. But just as she extended her hand, Castiel halted abruptly, and for a second, Dean wondered if he’d changed his mind.

“Dean?” His voice waivered, eyes huge as they looked at the ground and then up at Dean. Everyone realized a moment too late what was happening, and by then the circle had already caught, the spiral of script igniting and smoldering in a smokeless flame beneath Castiel’s feet.

“Get him out of there!” Ellen screamed right as Dean lunged for him. Sam pulled him back just in time.

“You can’t!” He struggled to hold Dean back. “It’ll disintegrate you!”

The Fire Trap dimmed and so did Castiel, the helpless terror on his face the last thing Dean saw before phasing out in a column of black smoke that collapsed, curled inward and vanished.

~:~

Very rarely was Dean ever at a loss. He had training, he had experience, he had access to a shit ton of weapons and the legal permits to use them, which cleared up a mind plenty when the situation arose that called for him to make such choices. And he could get vengeful, sure, riled up when things went bad. But blind, impotent rage- bloodlust -was not something he readily gave into. There had been two other times that Sam could recall when it’d happened: the night their father had died, and the incident in Providence that they never, ever talked about. Dean still got nightmares about that place, and to be honest, so did Sam on occasion. But neither one of those times had he seen Dean quite like this, screaming Cas’ name, eyes aflame, shaking hands seeking purchase on a gun. A great cloud of sulfurous fury building and ready to explode. If Sam didn’t act, no one was safe, because he knew, despite how it looked, Dean wasn’t about to fall on his knees in anguish or defeat.

There was a part of his brother, locked away and dormant, that did not recognize mercy, that could both imagine and execute a chronicle of horror on any living thing except Sam without a lick of remorse if the circumstances were right. And sometimes Dean liked to play up the American beefcake angle people tended to peg him as, pretty but dense, but Sam knew better. Dean was razor sharp, intelligent enough to connect the dots in the same instant as Sam, which meant someone was going to die.

Fire Traps were not easy to make. The spell itself only took a few minutes to set into place, but needed the hand of a powerful practitioner to get the elements blended correctly. They had to be laid exactly right, the quarry needed to step fully into the circle to activate, and they lasted less than a day.

Which all added up to one thing. Someone on this site was working with Crowley.

Why else had they only run into one little coven on the way here? Why expend the effort if you knew exactly which spot at which time your prey would be standing? Crowley could make a big distracting show of dropping a blind spot on his location in Vail, all while handing over the ingredients and instructions to someone on the inside who could lay out his trap right over the front door.

Dean already had his gun drawn and covering the span of shocked people in front of them before the last curls of smoke had evaporated.

“Everybody, weapons on the ground by the time I count to five or I’m taking you out.”

“Dean! Come on,” Sam threw up his hands, but still knew better than to try to get between them. “There’s dozens of people at this site, it could be any of them.”

“Agent Winchester!” Ellen barked, but Dean was beyond following orders.

Dean trained his gun on her without a flicker of remorse and Sam was relieved to see her slowly disarm and nod to the security detail to do the same.

“Everyone on their knees, hands behind your head.” Ellen glared at him but obeyed, the rest of the party following her lead. “How many exits are there?” Dean growled.

“Just this one.” Ellen stated, voice trained calm.

“Bullshit, there’s gotta be a back door.”

Agent Harvelle shook her head. “There isn’t. If things go wrong, we need this site….well contained.”

“Good, then why don’t we ask your buddies here a few questions before we go down there and round up your techs?”

Dean’s grip adjusted subtly on his pistol, and Sam knew he had to act fast.

“Calamus root!”

“Go get the zip ties, Sam.”

“No, wait, listen. They had to have used Calamus in the trap, a lot of it. I can trace it!”

For the first time, the flint edge to Dean’s gaze began to soften. It was all the opening Sam needed.

~:~

The counter agent wasn’t that hard to make from the supplies they had in the car and a few things down in the Vault. They’d tied up the Jessups and the two security officers and left them locked in the chapel with the “Closed” sign turned out on the door. Dean had kept Ellen close at hand as they’d descended the spiral stairs into the pristine splay of labs below. She was the first one they dusted with the powdery concoction, and had the grace to nod once at the brothers when she turned up clean. Dean handed her back her gun. It was as close to an apology as she knew she was going to get.

No alarms had been tripped, or announcements made over the intercom. Most of the techs barely looked up as the brothers entered the room, it was only when they each got a handful of powder blown into their faces that they reacted. As it stood, Dean only had to threaten two of them and knock one of them out to keep them from causing a scene. Sam did his best to keep everyone else calm while Agent Harvelle oversaw the process without interfering.

They found their man in the archives, a smug little shit that blustered with initial fear when the powder glowed blue in telling patches on his clothes and skin, but he puffed up with undeserved bravado under the evidence.

“Agent Darby,” Ellen’s expression betrayed nothing. “You’ll need to come with us.”

“There’s nothing you can do.” He taunted, “He has what he needs now. The true king will visit Hell upon you all! And his servants will be anointed by the mantle of absolute power!”

Dean fell on him without a word, tossing him over the table and pounding him ferociously atop a scattered carpet of priceless documents until his fists were bloody. Darby went limp, and Dean got to his feet. It was Agent Harvelle who caught the movement in time, kicking the leather pouch from the man’s hand as he attempted to drag it from his pocket. The explosion of obscuring smoke and sparks erupted at a safe distance, but he still tried to run.

“Oh no you don’t,” Dean tackled him easily, swung around and picked a leg. The knife blade was well cared for, cleanly honed, it severed the man’s Achilles tendon with barely any pressure. Sam edged in but wasn’t about to intervene. Ellen moved to the door, ready to dissuade anyone who might not be astute enough to ignore the screams. “Some surgery, little therapy, you’ll be walking again in no time. But you’re going to answer my questions or I’ll start in on the parts that can’t be reattached. When’s this ritual going down?”

~:~

Whatever favor Ellen had to call in to get a military chopper scrambled and touching down in a whirlwind of dust not ten yards from the chapel must have been a big one because from the time Darby burbled out the last of what he knew from a broken, bloody mouth to the time both brothers were airborne, watching the Impala, the dingy white chapel and the resolute figure of Agent Harvelle shrinking into the breadth of the Kansas plains, it was less than twenty minutes.

Even so, even with the pilot under orders to push their speed beyond the boundary of safety, the blades and the engine screaming, it still took them almost two hours to make it to Vail. Dean wanted to claw his own face off in frustration the whole way. Just gathering the ingredients and the right caster needed to create a mini portal of their own to drop through would have taken longer than it would to drive and for God’s sake why hadn’t someone figured out how to automate this shit by now? Why wasn’t unlimited, instantaneous travel priority fucking one for the Bureau? Jesus, give it to Amazon to figure out, they’d sure as shit work out how to beam crap right into people’s laps with the push of a button.

He must have been snarling some of this, because his brother’s voice bleated over the headset, “We’re gonna make it, we have time.”

They didn’t have time, and Sam damn well knew that, but for once Dean appreciated the positive attitude. One would think creating a cosmic singularity wherein untold powers could be funneled into the body of a receptive warlock through the lens of an angel’s grace would need some sort of timetable: planets aligning, stars converging with Mars in Scorpio and all that crap, or hell, even just waiting till the stroke of midnight, but it didn’t. If the table was set, the party could begin, and none of them had any way of knowing exactly how much time they had before Crowley was ready. If Darby was to be trusted, not much at all.

Dean watched Sam press his palm to the place on his chest where the small totem rested beneath his shirt on a simple leather string. It didn’t look like much, two bits of wood twined round in a loose twist, a pin of gold embedded in the center, but they’d followed Ellen at a fast clip while they’d waited for the chopper and watched her navigate two keycodes, a badge reader and a retina scan before carefully lifting the thing from a titanium box like it was a bomb about to go off.

“Holy shit, don’t give it to _him_!” Sam had declared before snatching it away when Ellen had offered it to Dean. Probably for the best, he didn’t even know what it was.

“This is the nuclear option, boys. God help you if you have to use it.”

~:~

Burning. Everything was on fire.

Castiel tried to breathe but the very air seemed like a weight in his chest, too hot, sulfurous. The slab he was lashed to seared every inch of skin it touched, the unnatural flames that surrounded it heating the whole great mass of stone so hot Castiel could barely concentrate on anything but the pain of his body burning and healing, burning and healing. Over and over.

He couldn’t even feel his wings anymore, spread and pinned by broad iron stakes nailed just below the radiale bone, driven into the marble.

He’d been here for days it felt like, and though somewhere he knew that was untrue, time felt over-stretched here, disconcertingly malleable like warm plasticine, the pain and the smoke and the chanting making it hard to focus.

Beside his alter, Crowley stood half naked, arms snaking the air as he snarled out chants in a dead language. His acolytes spilled over the floors of his black cathedral, writhing on their knees, cutting themselves and each other with crude looking knives until the blood flickered in warped a mirror of glossy red flames. Every wall was cloaked in fire, great reaching flames that undulated with magic, churning and alive.

Crowley’s voice grew louder, he dipped his fingers into the wounds on Castiel’s wings and painted runes over the flabby spills of his chest and belly with the blood. A groan and a roar, and the ceiling above them crumbled, the pieces floating, swirling high above them, caught in the vortex of the spell as it converged.

From a space deep inside him, Castiel felt a pull, a part of him snared by the barbed web of Crowley’s spell. His grace, it was being ripped from his core, the toxic magic digging into him, probing, ready to fill the void once it had its prize, obliterate him from the inside out.

He was going to die here, and the thought made him more frustrated than afraid, which surprised him. He should be terrified, angels didn’t die easily and he couldn’t think of any way out of this, but the only thing he could think of was Dean. He was never going to see that brilliant soul, he was never going to touch him again, to spend the time before Dean woke counting his freckles, never going to listen to him sing as he drove, never….

The churning above him grew deafening, his vision dimming as his grace unraveled under the strain. He didn’t have much time. For the first time in eons, Castiel prayed.

_Brothers, I implore you, watch over Dean Winchester_

Screams erupted, and Castiel turned as best he could, watched through watery eyes as a great golden figure burst through the wall, wings unfurling and beating with a powerful thrust, a heavy gale of air washing through the room, extinguishing every flame. Two hulking figures shouldered past and chaos erupted- gunshots, Crowley snarling and running into the fray, great chunks of smoldering plaster falling as everything around them began to collapse.

But the pull at his grace didn’t let up, and Castiel could feel himself slipping from consciousness. Frantic hands were on him, tugging at the ropes, cutting them free.

“I got you angel, I got you,” Dean assured him, and Castiel blinked his vision clear and smiled. Dean had come for him.

“Dean,” he croaked, his voice shredded raw. “I didn’t get to- I wanted to thank you-“

“No! We’re not doing this, we’re not having this dying breath conversation here. You hear me?”

The ropes were free, but Dean was struggling to remove the stake from Castiel’s right wing.

“I’ve been so happy with you, Dean. I didn’t know I could ever feel happiness like that, I—“

“NO! GODDAMNIT!” Dean cursed, the stake refused to budge no matter how hard he pulled. “Cas, listen, we can do this later, I swear. I’ll take you wherever you want to go, just you and me and we’ll watch the sunset and do all that feelings crap, but right now, if you’ve got anything left in you, I need you to help me!”

“I can’t, the spell is--” Castiel’s fingers crawled up to fist Dean’s shirt, “You need to know that I love you, Dean.”

Dean clutched Castiel’s hand in his own, bringing it to his lips to kiss the bloody knuckles as he sobbed, a choked, anguished sound.

“Please don’t leave me, Cas, _please_ I—“

Dean hit the ground hard as Crowley tackled him with the full weight of his howling fury. They grappled along the floor, Dean finally able to mount Crowley, punching him as hard as he could, snatching his gun free and shooting the warlock point blank in the head, but nothing worked. Crowley only laughed as the bullet wound in his head smoked. He knocked Dean clear across the room and rose to his feet.

“So nice of you to give me the opportunity to settle accounts,” Crowley purred, stalking. “I was very cross when you ran off with my little bird. But now you can make it up to me, one last bit of fun. In a minute, I’ll be at full power, and killing pests like you will be so easy I’m sure I’ll grow bored of it. How ‘bout we do one last hurrah the old-fashioned way?”

Castiel tried, he struggled against the pain and the darkness to help Dean, to wrench himself free, but it was no use. He listened as Dean screamed for his brother before everything went black.

~:~

“Sam!” Dean shouted across the room. This was it, Crowley was advancing on him with demonic red eyes and he was either going to die here by this asshole or from the whole groaning building coming down on their heads. It made things pretty damn simple.

Sam, half buried under a dog pile of Crowley’s acolytes, yanked the totem from his neck and chucked it across the room.

The whole gathering paused, held its breath as it arced through the air before Dean snatched it.

“You know my favorite thing about magic?” With a snap, Dean broke the twin halves of twisted wood, the gold pin falling into his hand. And Crowley didn’t know what it was, or didn’t think it mattered, because the smug look he wore didn’t falter, not even as Dean charged him. “This.”

Dean drove the pin straight into Crowley’s chest then jumped back. Crowley looked down at the needle of gold embedded in his skin and laughed. Laughed in genuine glee, inhaled a breath and his laugh broke apart, stuttered and sharpened until he was screaming. Crowley watched in horror as the little gold pin burrowed down into his skin, visibly sinking through the viscera and bone on a glowing path. It drilled all the way to the floor, and Crowley’s body cleaved in two along the fault it had created, slipped apart with only his wobbling neck joining the two halves and collapsed on the ground in a gelatinous heap.

The pin kept working, blinding bright as it sucked all the magic from the room. The marble alter cracked with a deafening boom, the stakes dissolving along with the spell and Castiel slid unconscious over the side. Dean caught him just in time, shielding his angel from the swirl of debris that cyclone around them.

“Cas- CAS!” He shouted, and Castiel’s eyes opened a slit. “You’re gonna be fine now, yeah? We’re gonna get out of here and-“

Castiel kissed him, dragged him down with the desperation of one who knows they’re about to die. Dean held him as tight as he could, one last beautiful thing before they were both crushed beneath the rubble still swirling around them, circling the drain of magic until it gave out. At least he got this, at least he got to die with Castiel in his arms and on his lips. He probably didn’t deserve a death this good, but he was sure as hell going to take it.

.

.

.

.

.

And then a bird was singing, a car passing by. Dean blinked and he was standing in an open field beside the road. The sun shone against his face, the air free of sulfur and smoke and blood. Standing across from him was Castiel, fully restored and just as confused.

“Uhhhh….guys?”

They turned in unison to Sam, dazed, tousled and inexplicable missing every bit of clothing but his briefs.

“How the hell,” Dean looked around. Wherever they were, it was miles from whatever rubble was left of Crowley’s lair. “Cas, what the hell are you wearing?”

“What?” Castiel looked down at himself, at the rumpled blue suit and the tan trench coat, tie askew. “Oh...”

And just like that, there were two more people in the field, a man and a woman in almost the exact same state of dress as Castiel.

“Brother,” The woman spoke, reserved but not unkind. “You are no longer restricted from entering Heaven, the threat has passed.”

Castiel turned to Dean, a stricken look on his face. The man moved beside Cas, placed a hand on his shoulder. “It is time to go.”

Castiel opened his mouth, inhaled as if to speak, but just like that, all three angels vanished.

~:~

The transport that was sent to pick them up had orders to take the Winchesters all the way to D.C. via the private plane waiting and ready at a nearby airfield. It wasn’t hard to give them the slip, or to hotwire a car and drive the half day back to Kansas. Sam took the wheel, with Dean silent and staring listlessly out the window the whole way. The chapel was quiet when they’d returned, no one there to see them drop heavily into the Impala’s familiar cradle, they weren’t expected. Nothing was spoken as they limped their way back to D.C., for once, Sam didn’t push. This wasn’t Dean quietly repressing, tamping down his emotions and gearing up for a bender or real nasty fight. He was grieving, Sam could tell that he was. Cas was gone, and no matter what Dean had tried to tell himself before to make it easier, that it was just a job like all the others, Sam had known there was something more between them from the moment his brother had laid eyes on that angel.

Special Director Singer, the big man in the sky, called them up to his office the minute they arrived at headquarters. His set up was impressive, sure, but not what anyone expected the first time they got summoned to the top floor. Singer didn’t like windows, never could get behind the idea of a big shot corner office with walls of glass that left you exposed from every angle. He didn’t like office furniture, though there was a desk shoved into a dark corner next to the liquor cabinet. There was a war table, an ugly round thing in the middle of the room that was always a disaster with maps and yellowed scrolls. There were shelves of books and photos on the walls, and if someone were inclined to give them a good dusting, they’d see more than a few with the Winchester boys smiling back, years younger with arms wrapped around each other or Bobby, always with the great outdoors open and green behind them. He didn’t like suits either, but it was one formality he could never shake, and the brothers liked to tease him whenever they got a chance to visit over how goddamned uncomfortable he always looked and didn’t he miss the old days in the cab of a truck with three day old socks and hunting jackets with the right amount of pockets and grimy baseball caps that fit just right.

They weren’t joking now. Dean barely even heard what the old man said, the gruff beat of his voice was enough to know it was nothing but a bunch of useless consolation. The Bureau wasn't happy they'd lost the angel, but it was a digestible trade if it meant Crowley's plans had been stopped. Bobby could spin that easy enough to protect the boys, but the fallout of using the totem- a null zone the size of Delaware, devoid of any and all magic for the next hundred years- came with a lot more political blowback and got them a month leave to keep the brothers out of the line of sight. For once Dean didn’t try to shove it back.

The brothers drove aimless across the country for nearly two weeks. Dean didn’t say as much, but Sam could sense his brother needed to keep moving, needed one identical town after the next to the soundtrack of his old cassette tapes blaring out from the speakers. Somewhere near the Black Hills, where the nights were already snappish, Dean turned south and kept on driving till they made it to that wide, rolling place where herds of Mustangs snorted steam in the cold morning air. Sam sat beside him on the hood of the car, watching the sleek bodies shake off the night’s frost, stamping their feet and foraging until the sun burnished gold and some unnamed call roused them to _chase_.

Dean watched the racing herds hours after Sam had folded himself into the backseat for a nap. Did they remember? Would any of those rangy, wild beasts tilt an eye up now and then, curious to see if they’d catch the sheen of great black wings? He could still picture Cas, picture him laughing and windblown and free, his shadow dappling the backs of the horses, his hands stroking their necks in giddy camaraderie as they all flew.

He would have stayed longer, he would have stayed right here for days until the bones inside him froze because it was here he could see Cas the clearest, so sharp it made his chest hurt. But Sam was looking at him with that endless patience he sometimes had saying t _ake all the time you need_ , so he knew it was time to move on.

The road out was long, featureless, the highway it met barren in both directions. Dean sat at the intersection, undecided.

“Dean?” Sam nudged.

To the left was work, hunting and the pale, familiar satisfaction of killing what needed putting down. To the right was the west coast, territory rarely explored with deserts and redwoods and beaches he was sure Sammy wouldn’t mind seeing. It was also terrain he would never get to show Cas.

He turned left.

They’d made it barely a mile when he saw him, the dark tangle of hair bobbing atop a tan trenchcoat like the kind the other angels had worn. Beautiful Castiel, shuffling along the highway’s edge, both hands stuffed in his pockets and shoulders stooped. God, he’d seen him so many times, had pictured the man somewhere off in the distance so often in the last few weeks that Dean’s only action was to shake the vision from his head and speed up a little more.

“Uh….Dean?” Sam’s head whipped around so fast his whole body followed. “Was that _Cas_?!”

“Wh- you saw him, too?”

With an earsplitting squeal and a silent promise to buy her new tires, Dean hit the brakes and turned the Impala around in a hard one-eighty. Plumes of white smoke billowed from her tail end as he burned out, rocketing back the way they came. The figure up ahead had never stopped walking, had never even looked up, so there was a moment Dean thought they might both be mistaken, but when he cut across the asphalt, throwing the car into park right in the man’s path there was no mistaking the blue eyes that met him.

“Cas?” Dean jumped from the car, freezing a second before tearing around to the other side. “Cas!”

“Dean!” Castiel was in his arms, winding himself around Dean so tight he feared they would both lose their balance. “Oh, Dean I’ve been walking! I didn’t know how to find you so I’ve been walking for days to all the places you showed me. I didn’t think I’d ever find you again!”

Dean stroked his face, his hair, pulled Castiel in tight against him then held him at arm’s length again to take in the sight of him, to be sure that this was real. “What are you doing here? I thought they were bringing you back to Heaven to fulfill your angelic duties and all that.”

“I was, they did, but it seems I was able to convince them to assign me a new role here on Earth.”

“Seriously? You gonna sit on my shoulder, Cas?” Dean couldn’t help teasing. “Teach me right from wrong? My reputation up there must be pretty bad.”

“The mortal concept of a guardian angel is false, Dean. We do not have the numbers to facilitate— oh…..you were joking.” Castiel blushed, smiling at the ground. And it was so goddamned charming Dean lost a handful of minutes kissing him until they were both panting, tongues delving deeply into each other’s mouths, Dean spinning them and knocking Cas back against the car and grinding them together until Sam cleared his throat.

“So you’re staying? Tell me you’re staying,” Dean heaved, trying to catch his breath.

“Yes, I—“

“Good,” Dean opened the back seat and all but shoved Castiel inside. “Get in the car.”

Sam stood there for a beat as his brother climbed in after the angel, wasting no time tugging the coat from his shoulders and pressing him into the upholstery.

“So, I’m driving then?” Sam asked with no expectation of an answer. “Yeah, I’ll just drive.”

He kept his eyes fixed on the road until the two of them finally decided to come up for air somewhere around Abilene.

“So tell me, Cas, what’s this job they gave you slumming around with us filthy mortals?”

Castiel’s lips shined an obscene red, his tie undone, shirt buttons open revealing the tan skin of his throat as he tried to collect himself.

“One of the highest ranking angels in our order, the archangel Gabriel, has been missing for ages.”

Dean caught Sam’s eye in the rearview mirror.

“You don’t say.”

“They wish very much to restore him to his place in Heaven, but he has proven difficult to track. It would appear that after you prayed to him, very profanely I might add Dean, he broke through Crowley’s defenses to save me. He has returned, it seems, and is already up to his old tricks.”

“Oh yeah?” Dean smirked, “And how do they know that?”

Digging through his pockets, Castiel unfolded a color print out of a classical looking painting, and Dean considered the idea that Heaven used laser printers before he understood what it was he was seeing.

“A private collector will be contacting the Bureau today. One of their pieces has been….altered….under very unexplainable circumstances.”

Dean grabbed the picture and laughed, laughed so hard tears spilled down his cheeks and his lungs burned.

“It’s _The Abduction of Psyche_ by Emile Signol,” Castiel offered, not that Dean knew art from a road sign. All he knew was that he’d pay every cent he had just to hang this baby on his wall.

Soft, romantic pastel colors of a gloriously golden angel with a familiar face and a wicked grin winging through the air. And in his capable arm, swooning beautifully like a ravished maiden, hair spilling in chestnut waves, was Sam. And far below the soaring figures, standing amidst blackened rubble, Cas and Dean, clasping hands and staring at each other with actual hearts for eyes.

“Gimme that!” Sam grabbed it from the front seat, squawking in outrage and cursing Gabriel’s name.

“I thought maybe we might assist each other. Seeing as he’s shown an interest in you, you might help me find my brother, and I could help you with what you do….with hunting.” By the time he’d finished, Castiel didn’t sound so sure of himself, as if worried he was asking too much, as if Dean would turn him away.

“Lemme ask you one thing, how long’d they give you to find your brother?” Dean kept his voice steady but his heart was about ready to punch through his chest.

“Well, as long as it takes.”

“So it could take a real long time then, huh? I mean, we might never find Gabriel.”

“No,” Castiel’s growing smile now matching Dean’s own. “I suppose not. But I assured them I would not rest until I’d restored Gabriel to his rightful place.”

“So there’s no need to rush then, and we still got two more weeks of leave.” Dean spoke the words against Castiel’s lips, so goddamned happy as he dragged his angel down into the back seat that he thought he would burst.

“But what are we gonna do about _this_!?” Sam shook the picture in his fist as he drove.

“What’s the problem Sammy? You’re a masterpiece now, and it looks like Gabe was pretty generous with your, uhhh….goods and services. Come here, angel.” And he pulled Castiel into his lap, just reveling in the weight of him, pulling him in close and knowing with absolute clarity that he was never going to let go.

“Dean,” Castiel spoke his name reverently, wrapping all the love and adulation he felt into that one simple word. Cupping his face, Dean pulled Cas in for a long, sweet kiss, feeding the sentiment back to his angel with the sweep of his lips.

“Can you guys not do this now, I can’t see out the rearview mirror.”

“Quit your bitching, Samantha, we fucking deserve this. Now point this baby west and take us to the nearest coast. I got some things I gotta tell Cas on a sunset beach.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading everyone!!
> 
> For an image of the painting Gabriel altered to portray his dashing rescue of his favorite Winchester, click [here](https://img.posterlounge.co.uk/images/wbig/poster-die-entfuehrung-der-psyche-124702.jpg) .


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